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THE STORY OF GRENFELL OF THE LABRADOR

[Illustration: THE PHYSICIAN IN THE LABRADOR]




The Story of Grenfell
of the Labrador

A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell

By
DILLON WALLACE,
Author of "_Grit-a-Plenty_," "_The Ragged Inlet Guards_,"
"_Ungava Bob_," etc., etc.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK          CHICAGO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH


Copyright, 1922, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street




Foreword


In a land where there was no doctor and no school, and through an evil
system of barter and trade the people were practically bound to
serfdom, Doctor Wilfred T. Grenfell has established hospitals and
nursing stations, schools and co-operative stores, and raised the
people to a degree of self dependence and a much happier condition of
life. All this has been done through his personal activity, and is
today being supported through his personal administration.

The author has lived among the people of Labrador and shared some of
their hardships. He has witnessed with his own eyes some of the
marvelous achievements of Doctor Grenfell. In the following pages he
has made a poor attempt to offer his testimony. The book lays no claim
to either originality or literary merit. It barely touches upon the
field. The half has not been told.

He also wishes to acknowledge reference in compiling the book to old
files and scrapbooks of published articles concerning Doctor Grenfell
and his work, to Doctor Grenfell's book _Vikings of Today_, and to
having verified dates and incidents through Doctor Grenfell's
Autobiography, published by Houghton Mifflin & Company, of Boston.

  D.W.

  _Beacon, N.Y._




Contents


      I. THE SANDS OF DEE                                 11

     II. THE NORTH SEA FLEETS                             26

    III. ON THE HIGH SEAS                                 31

     IV. DOWN ON THE LABRADOR                             39

      V. THE RAGGED MAN IN THE RICKETY BOAT               52

     VI. OVERBOARD!                                       61

    VII. IN THE BREAKERS                                  68

   VIII. AN ADVENTUROUS VOYAGE                            74

     IX. IN THE DEEP WILDERNESS                           83

      X. THE SEAL HUNTER                                  99

     XI. UNCLE WILLY WOLFREY                             109

    XII. A DOZEN FOX TRAPS                               116

   XIII. SKIPPER TOM'S COD TRAP                          126

    XIV. THE SAVING OF RED BAY                           135

     XV. A LAD OF THE NORTH                              146

    XVI. MAKING A HOME FOR THE ORPHANS                   158

   XVII. THE DOGS OF THE ICE TRAIL                       171

  XVIII. FACING AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD                       183

    XIX. HOW AMBROSE WAS MADE TO WALK                    193

     XX. LOST ON THE ICE FLOE                            203

    XXI. WRECKED AND ADRIFT                              213

   XXII. SAVING A LIFE                                   219

  XXIII. REINDEER AND OTHER THINGS                       225

   XXIV. THE SAME GRENFELL                               233




ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                          FACING PAGE

  The Physician in the LABRADOR                                _Title_

  The LABRADOR "LIVEYERE"                                        40

  "Sails North to Remain Until the End of Summer,
    Catching Cod"                                                46

  The Doctor on a Winter's Journey                               84

  "The Trap is Submerged a Hundred Yards or so from Shore"      130

  "NEXT"                                                        172

  "Please Look at My Tongue, Doctor"                            172

  The Hospital Ship, STRATHCONA                                 220

  "I Have a Crew Strong Enough to Take You into My District"    234




I

THE SANDS OF DEE


The first great adventure in the life of our hero occurred on the
twenty-eighth day of February in the year 1865. He was born that day.
The greatest adventure as well as the greatest event that ever comes
into anybody's life is the adventure of being born.

If there is such a thing as luck, Wilfred Thomason Grenfell, as his
parents named him, fell into luck, when he was born on February
twenty-eighth, 1865. He might have been born on February twenty-ninth
one year earlier, and that would have been little short of a
catastrophe, for in that case his birthdays would have been separated
by intervals of four years, and every boy knows what a hardship it
would be to wait four years for a birthday, when every one else is
having one every year. There _are_ people, to be sure, who would like
their birthdays to be four years apart, but they are not boys.

Grenfell was also lucky, or, let us say, fortunate in the place where
he was born and spent his early boyhood. His father was Head Master of
Mostyn House, a school for boys at Parkgate, England, a little
fishing village not far from the historic old city of Chester. By
referring to your map you will find Chester a dozen miles or so to the
southward of Liverpool, though you may not find Parkgate, for it is so
small a village that the map makers are quite likely to overlook it.

Here at Parkgate the River Dee flows down into an estuary that opens
out into the Irish Sea, and here spread the famous "Sands of Dee,"
known the world over through Charles Kingsley's pathetic poem, which
we have all read, and over which, I confess, I shed tears when a boy:

    O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
        And call the cattle home,
        And call the cattle home,
      Across the Sands o' Dee;
    The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam,
      And all alone went she.

    The creeping tide came up along the sand,
        And o'er and o'er the sand,
        And round and round the sand,
      As far as eye could see;
    The blinding mist came down and hid the land--
      And never home came she.

    Oh is it weed, or fish, or floating hair--
        A tress o' golden hair,
        O' drown'ed maiden's hair,
      Above the nets at sea?
    Was never salmon yet that shone so fair,
      Among the stakes on Dee.

    They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
        The cruel, crawling foam,
        The cruel, hungry foam,
      To her grave beside the sea;
    But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,
      Across the Sands o' Dee.

Charles Kingsley and the poem become nearer and dearer to us than ever
with the knowledge that he was a cousin of Grenfell, and knew the
Sands o' Dee, over which Grenfell tramped and hunted as a boy, for the
sandy plain was close by his father's house.

There was a time when the estuary was a wide deep harbor, and really a
part of Liverpool Bay, and great ships from all over the world came
into it and sailed up to Chester, which in those days was a famous
port. But as years passed the sands, loosened by floods and carried
down by the river current, choked and blocked the harbor, and before
Grenfell was born it had become so shallow that only fishing vessels
and small craft could use it.

Parkgate is on the northern side of the River Dee. On the southern
side and beyond the Sands of Dee, rise the green hills of Wales,
melting away into blue mysterious distance. Near as Wales is the
people over there speak a different tongue from the English, and to
young Grenfell and his companions it was a strange and foreign land
and the people a strange and mysterious people. We have most of us,
in our young days perhaps, thought that all Welshmen were like Taffy,
of whom Mother Goose sings:

    "Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,
    Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef;
    I went to Taffy's house, Taffy wasn't home,
    Taffy came to my house and stole a marrow bone;
    I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was in bed,
    I took the marrow-bone, and beat about his head."

But it was Grenfell's privilege, living so near, to make little visits
over into Wales, and he early had an opportunity to learn that Taffy
was not in the least like Welshmen. He found them fine, honest,
kind-hearted folk, with no more Taffys among them than there are among
the English or Americans. The great Lloyd George, perhaps the greatest
of living statesmen, is a Welshman, and by him and not by Taffy, we
are now measuring the worth of this people who were the near neighbors
of Grenfell in his young days.

Mostyn House, where Grenfell lived, overlooked the estuary. From the
windows of his father's house he could see the fishing smacks going
out upon the great adventurous sea and coming back laden with fish.

Living by the sea where he heard the roar of the breakers and every
day smelled the good salt breath of the ocean, it was natural that he
should love it, and to learn, almost as soon as he could run about,
to row and sail a boat, and to swim and take part in all sorts of
water sports. Time and again he went with the fishermen and spent the
night and the day with them out upon the sea. This is why it was
fortunate that he was born at Parkgate, for his life there as a boy
trained him to meet adventures fearlessly and prepared him for the
later years which were destined to be years of adventure.

Far up the river, wide marshes reached; and over these marshes, and
the Sands of Dee, Grenfell roamed at will. His father and mother were
usually away during the long holidays when school was closed, and he
and his brothers were left at these times with a vast deal of freedom
to do as they pleased and seek the adventure that every boy loves, and
on the sands and in the marshes there was always adventure enough to
be found.

Shooting in the marshes and out upon the sands was a favorite sport,
and when not with the fishermen Grenfell was usually to be found with
his gun stalking curlew, oyster diggers, or some other of the numerous
birds that frequented the marshes and shores. Barefooted, until the
weather grew too cold in autumn, and wearing barely enough clothing to
cover his nakedness, he would set out in early morning and not return
until night fell.

As often as not he returned from his day's hunting empty handed so far
as game was concerned, but this in no wise detracted from the pleasure
of the hunt. Game was always worth the getting, but the great joy was
in being out of doors and in tramping over the wide flats. With all
the freedom given him to hunt, he early learned that no animals or
birds were to be killed on any account save for food or purposes of
study. This is the rule of every true sportsman. Grenfell has always
been a great hunter and a fine shot, but he has never killed
needlessly.

Young Grenfell through these expeditions soon learned to take a great
deal of interest in the habits of birds and their life history. This
led him to try his skill at skinning and mounting specimens. An old
fisherman living near his home was an excellent hand at this and gave
him his first lessons, and presently he developed into a really expert
taxidermist, while his brother made the cases in which he mounted and
exhibited his specimens.

His interest in birds excited an interest in flowers and plants and
finally in moths and butterflies. The taste for nature study is like
the taste for olives. You have to cultivate it, and once the taste is
acquired you become extremely fond of it. Grenfell became a student of
moths and butterflies. He captured, mounted and identified specimens.
He was out of nights with his net hunting them and "sugaring" trees to
attract them, and he even bred them. A fine collection was the result,
and this, together with one of flowers and plants, was added to that
of his mounted birds. In the course of time he had accumulated a
creditable museum of natural history, which to this day may be seen
at Mostyn House, in Parkgate; and to it have been added specimens of
caribou, seals, foxes, porcupines and other Labrador animals, which in
his busy later years he has found time to mount, for he is still the
same eager and devoted student of nature.

During these early years, with odds and ends of boards that they
collected, Grenfell and his brother built a boat to supply a better
means of stealing upon flocks of water birds. It was a curious
flat-bottomed affair with square ends and resembled a scow more than a
rowboat, but it served its purpose well enough, and was doubtless the
first craft which the young adventurer, later to become a master
mariner, ever commanded. Up and down the estuary, venturing even to
the sea, the two lads cruised in their clumsy craft, stopping over
night with the kind-hearted fishermen or "sleeping out" when they
found themselves too far from home. Many a fine time the ugly little
boat gave them until finally it capsized one day leaving them to swim
for it and reach the shore as best they could.

At the age of fourteen Grenfell was sent to Marlborough "College,"
where he had earned a scholarship. This was not a college as we speak
of a college in America, but a large university preparatory school.

In the beginning he had a fight with an "old boy," and being victor
firmly established his place among his fellow students. Whether at
Mostyn House, or later at Marlborough College, Grenfell learned early
to use the gloves. It was quite natural, devoted as he was to
athletics, that he should become a fine boxer. To this day he loves
the sport, and is always ready to put on the gloves for a bout, and it
is a mighty good man that can stand up before him. In most boys'
schools of that day, and doubtless at Marlborough College, boys
settled their differences with gloves, and in all probability Grenfell
had plenty of practice, for he was never a mollycoddle. He was perhaps
not always the winner, but he was always a true sportsman. There is a
vast difference between a "sportsman" and a "sport." Grenfell was a
sportsman, never a sport. His life in the open taught him to accept
success modestly or failure smilingly, and all through his life he has
been a sportsman of high type.

The three years that Grenfell spent at Marlborough College were active
ones. He not only made good grades in his studies but he took a
leading part in all athletics. Study was easy for him, and this made
it possible to devote much time to physical work. Not only did he
become an expert boxer, but he had no difficulty in making the school
teams, in football, cricket, and other sports that demanded skill,
nerve and physical energy.

Like all youngsters running over with the joy of youth and life, he
got into his full share of scrapes. If there was anything on foot,
mischievous or otherwise, Grenfell was on hand, though his mischief
and escapades were all innocent pranks or evasion of rules, such as
going out of bounds at prohibited hours to secure goodies. The greater
the element of adventure the keener he was for an enterprise. He was
not by any means always caught in his pranks, but when he was he
admitted his guilt with heroic candor, and like a hero stood up for
his punishment. Those were the days when the hickory switch in
America, and the cane in England, were the chief instruments of
torture.

With the end of his course at Marlborough College, Grenfell was
confronted with the momentous question of his future and what he was
to do in life. This is a serious question for any young fellow to
answer. It is a question that involves one's whole life. Upon the
decision rests to a large degree happiness or unhappiness, content or
discontent, success or failure.

It impressed him now as a question that demanded his most serious
thought. For the first time there came to him a full realization that
some day he would have to earn his way in the world with his own brain
and hands. A vista of the future years with their responsibilities,
lay before him as a reality, and he decided that it was up to him to
make the most of those years and to make a success of life. No doubt
this realization fell upon him as a shock, as it does upon most lads
whose parents have supplied their every need. Now he was called upon
to decide the matter for himself, and his future education was to be
guided by his choice.

At various periods of his youthful career nearly every boy has an
ambition to be an Indian fighter, or a pirate, or a locomotive
engineer, or a fireman and save people from burning buildings at the
risk of his own life, or to be a hunter of ferocious wild animals.
Grenfell had dreamed of a romantic and adventurous career. Now he
realized that these ambitions must give place to a sedate profession
that would earn him a living and in which he would be contented.

All of his people had been literary workers, educators, clergymen, or
officers in the army or navy. There was Charles Kingsley and "Westward
Ho." There was Sir Richard Grenvil, immortalized by Tennyson in "The
Revenge." There was his own dear grandfather who was a master at Rugby
under the great Arnold, whom everybody knows through "Tom Brown at
Rugby."

It was the wish of some of his friends and family that he become a
clergyman. This did not in the least suit his tastes, and he
immediately decided that whatever profession he might choose, it would
_not_ be the ministry. The ministry was distasteful to him as a
profession, and he had no desire or intention to follow in the
footsteps of his ancestors. He wished to be original, and to blaze a
new trail for himself.

Grenfell was exceedingly fond of the family physician, and one day he
went to him to discuss his problem. This physician had a large
practice. He kept several horses to take him about the country
visiting his patients, and in his daily rounds he traveled many miles.
This was appealing to one who had lived so much out of doors as
Grenfell had. As a doctor he, too, could drive about the country
visiting patients. He could enjoy the sunshine and feel the drive of
rain and wind in his face. He rebelled at the thought of engaging in
any profession that would rob him of the open sky. But he also
demanded that the profession he should choose should be one of
creative work. This would be necessary if his life were to be happy
and successful.

Observing the old doctor jogging along the country roads visiting his
far-scattered patients, it occurred to Grenfell that here was not only
a pleasant but a useful profession. With his knowledge of medicine the
doctor assisted nature in restoring people to health. Man must have a
well body if he would be happy and useful. Without a well body man's
hands would be idle and his brain dull. Only healthy men could invent
and build and administer. It was the doctor's job to keep them fit.
Here then was creative work of the highest kind! The thought thrilled
him!

Every boy of the right sort yearns to be of the greatest possible use
in the world. Unselfishness is a natural instinct. Boys are not born
selfish. They grow selfish because of association or training, and
because they see others about them practicing selfishness. Grenfell's
whole training had been toward unselfishness and usefulness. Here was
a life calling that promised both unselfish and useful service and at
the same time would gratify his desire to be a great deal out of
doors, and he decided at once that he would study medicine and be a
doctor.

His father was pleased with the decision. His course at Marlborough
College was completed, and he immediately took special work
preparatory to entering London Hospital and University.

In the University he did well. He passed his examinations creditably
at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and at London University,
and had time to take a most active part in the University athletics as
a member of various 'Varsity teams. At one time or another he was
secretary of the cricket, football and rowing clubs, and he took part
in several famous championship games, and during one term that he was
in residence at Oxford University he played on the University football
team.

One evening in 1885 Grenfell, largely through curiosity, dropped into
a tent where evangelistic meetings were in progress. The evangelists
conducting the meeting happened to be the then famous D.L. Moody and
Ira D. Sankey. Both Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey were men of marvelous
power and magnetism. Moody was big, wholesome and practical. He
preached a religion of smiles and happiness and helpfulness. He lived
what he preached. There was no humbug or hypocrisy in him. Sankey
never had a peer as a leader of mass singing.

Moody was announcing a hymn when Grenfell entered. Sankey, in his
illimitable style, struck up the music. In a moment the vast audience
was singing as Grenfell had never heard an audience sing before. After
the hymn Moody spoke. Grenfell told me once that that sermon changed
his whole outlook upon life. He realized that he was a Christian in
name only and not in fact. His religious life was a fraud.

There and then he determined that he must be either an out and out
Christian or honestly renounce Christianity. With his home training
and teachings he could not do the latter. He decided upon a Christian
life. He would do nothing as a doctor that he could not do with a
clear conscience as a Christian gentleman. This he also decided: a
man's religion is something for him to be proud of and any one ashamed
to acknowledge the faith of his fathers is a moral coward, and a moral
coward is more contemptible than a physical coward. He also was
convinced that a boy or man afraid or ashamed to acknowledge his
religious belief could only be a mental weakling.

It was characteristic of Grenfell that whatever he attempted to do he
did with courage and enthusiasm. He never was a slacker. The hospital
to which he was attached was situated in the centre of the worst slums
of London. It occurred to him that he might help the boys, and he
secured a room, fitted it up as a gymnasium, and established a sort of
boys' club, where on Sundays he held a Bible study class and where he
gave the boys physical work on Saturdays. There was no Y.M.C.A. in
England at that time where they could enjoy these privileges. In the
beginning, there were young thugs who attempted to make trouble. He
simply pitched them out, and in the end they were glad enough to
return and behave themselves.

Grenfell and his brother, with one of their friends, spent the long
holidays when college was closed cruising along the coast in an old
fishing smack which they rented. In the course of his cruising, the
thought came to him that it was hardly fair to the boys in the slums
to run away from them and enjoy himself in the open while they
sweltered in the streets, and he began at once to plan a camp for the
boys.

This was long before the days of Boy Scouts and their camps. It was
before the days of any boys' camps in England. It was an original idea
with him that a summer camp would be a fine experience for his boys.
At his own expense he established such a camp on the Welsh coast, and
during every summer until he finished his studies in the University he
took his boys out of the city and gave them a fine outing during a
part of the summer holiday period. It was just at this time that the
first boys' camp in America was founded by Chief Dudley as an
experiment, now the famous Camp Dudley on Lake Champlain. We may
therefore consider Grenfell as one of the pioneers in making popular
the boys' camp idea, and every boy that has a good time in a summer
camp should thank him.

But a time comes when all things must end, good as well as bad, and
the time came when Grenfell received his degree and graduated a
full-fledged doctor, and a good one, too, we may be sure. Now he was
to face the world, and earn his own bread and butter. Pleasant
holidays, and boys' camps were behind him. The big work of life, which
every boy loves to tackle, was before him.

Then it was that Dr. Frederick Treves, later Sir Frederick, a famous
surgeon under whom he had studied, made a suggestion that was to shape
young Dr. Grenfell's destiny and make his name known wherever the
English tongue is spoken.




II

THE NORTH SEA FLEETS


The North Sea, big as it is, has no great depth. Geologists say that
not long ago, as geologists calculate time, its bottom was dry land
and connected the British Isles with the continent of Europe. Then it
began to sink until the water swept in and covered it, and it is still
sinking. The deepest point in the North Sea is not more than thirty
fathoms, or one hundred eighty feet. There are areas where it is not
over five fathoms deep, and the larger part of it is less than twenty
fathoms.

Fish are attracted to the North Sea because it is shallow. Its bottom
forms an extensive fishing "bank," we might say, though it is not,
properly speaking, a bank at all, and here is found some of the finest
fishing in the world.

From time immemorial fishing fleets have gone to the North Sea, and
the North Sea fisheries is one of the important industries of Great
Britain. Men are born to it and live their lives on the small fishing
craft, and their sons follow them for generation after generation. It
is a hazardous calling, and the men of the fleets are brave and hardy
fellows.

The fishing fleets keep to the sea in winter as well as in summer, and
it is a hard life indeed when decks and rigging are covered with ice,
and fierce north winds blow the snow down, and the cold is bitter
enough to freeze a man's very blood. Seas run high and rough, which is
always the case in shallow waters, and great rollers sweep over the
decks of the little craft, which of necessity have small draft and low
freeboard.

The fishing fleets were like large villages on the sea. At the time of
which we write, and it may be so to this day, fast vessels came daily
to collect the fish they caught and to take the catch to market. Once
in every three months a vessel was permitted to return to its home
port for rest and necessary re-fitting, and then the men of her crew
were allowed one day ashore for each week they had spent at sea. Now
and again there came to the hospital sick or injured men returned from
the fleet on these home-coming vessels.

When Grenfell passed his final examinations in 1886, and was admitted
to the College of Physicians and Royal College of Surgeons of England,
Sir Frederick Treves suggested that he visit the North Sea fishing
fleets and lend his service to the fishermen for a time before
entering upon private practice. The great surgeon, himself a lover of
the sea and acquainted with Grenfell's inclinations toward an active
outdoor life, was also aware that Grenfell was a good sailor.

"Don't go in summer," admonished Sir Frederick. "Go in winter when you
can see the life of the men at its hardest and when they have the
greatest need of a doctor. Anyhow you'll have some rugged days at sea
if you go in winter."

He went on to explain that a few men had become interested in the
fishermen of the fleets and had chartered a vessel to go among them to
offer diversion in the hope of counteracting to some extent the
attraction of the whiskey and rum traders whose vessels sold much
liquor to the men and did a vast deal of harm. This vessel was open to
the visits of the fishermen. Religious services were held aboard her
on Sundays. There was no doctor in the fleet, and the skipper, who had
been instructed in ordinary bandaging and in giving simple remedies
for temporary relief, rendered first aid to the injured or sick until
they could be sent away on some home-bound vessel and placed in a
hospital for medical or surgical treatment. Thus a week or sometimes
two weeks would elapse before the sufferer could be put under a
doctor's care. Because of this long delay many men died who, with
prompt attention, would doubtless have lived.

"The men who have fitted out this mission boat would like a young
doctor to go with it," concluded Sir Frederick. "Go with them for a
little while. You'll find plenty of high sea's adventure, and you'll
like it."

In more than one way this suited Grenfell exactly. The opportunity
for adventure that such a cruise offered appealed to him strongly, as
it would appeal to any real live red-blooded man or boy. It also
offered an opportunity to gain practical experience in his profession
and at the same time render service to brave men who sadly needed it;
and he could lend a hand in fighting the liquor evil among the seamen
and thus share in helping to care for their moral, as well as their
physical welfare. He had seen much of the evils of the liquor traffic
during his student days in London, and he had acquired a wholesome
hatred for it. In short, he saw an opportunity to help make the lives
of these men happier. That is a high ideal for any one--to do
something whenever possible to bring happiness into the lives of
others.

This was too good an opportunity to let pass. It offered not only
practice in his profession but service for others, and there would be
the spice of adventure.

He applied without delay for the post, requesting to go on duty the
following January. Whether Sir Frederick Treves said a word for him to
the newly founded mission or not, I do not know, but at any rate
Grenfell, to his great delight, was accepted, and it is probable the
group of big hearted men who were sending the vessel to the fishermen
were no less pleased to secure the services of a young doctor of his
character.

At last the time came for departure. The mission ship was to sail
from Yarmouth. Grenfell had been impatiently awaiting orders to begin
his duties, when suddenly he received directions to join his vessel
prepared to go to sea at once. Filled with enthusiasm and keen for the
adventure he boarded the first train for Yarmouth.

It was a dark and rainy night when he arrived. Searching down among
the wharves he found the mission ship tied to her moorings. She proved
to be a rather diminutive schooner of the type and class used by the
North Sea fishermen, and if the young doctor had pictured a large and
commodious vessel he was disappointed. But Grenfell had been
accustomed in his boyhood to knocking about with fishermen and now he
was quite content with nothing better than fell to the lot of those he
was to serve.

The little vessel was neat as wax below deck. The crew were
big-hearted, brawny, good-natured fellows, and gave the Doctor a fine
welcome. Of course his quarters were small and crowded, but he was
bound on a mission and an adventure, and cramped quarters were no
obstacle to his enthusiasm. Grenfell was not the sort of man to growl
or complain at little inconveniences. He was thinking only of the
duties he had assumed and the adventures that were before him.

At last he was on the seas, and his life work, though he did not know
it then, had begun.




III

ON THE HIGH SEAS


The skipper of the vessel was a bluff, hearty man of the old school of
seamen. At the same time he was a sincere Christian devoted to his
duties. At the beginning he made it plain that Grenfell was to have
quite enough to do to keep him occupied, not only in his capacity as
doctor, but in assisting to conduct afloat a work that in many
respects resembled that of our present Young Men's Christian
Association ashore.

The mission steamer was now to run across to Ostend, Belgium, where
supplies were to be taken aboard before joining the fishing fleets.

It was bitterly cold, and while they lay at Ostend taking on cargo the
harbor froze over, and they found themselves so firm and fast in the
ice that it became necessary to engage a steamer to go around them to
break them loose. At last, cargo loaded and ice smashed, they sailed
away from Ostend and pointed their bow towards the great fleets, not
again to see land for two full months, save Heligoland and
Terschelling in the far distant offing.

The little vessel upon which Grenfell sailed was the first sent to
the fisheries by the now famous Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen; and the
young Doctor on her deck, hardly yet realizing all that was expected
of him, was destined to do no small part in the development of the
splendid service that the Mission has since rendered the fishermen.

On the starboard side of the vessel's bow appeared in bold carved
letters the words, "Heal the sick," on the port side of the bow,
"Preach the Word."

"Preaching the Word" does not necessarily mean, and did not mean here,
getting up into a pulpit for an hour or two and preaching orthodox
sermons, sometimes as dry as dead husks, on Sundays. Sometimes just a
smile and a cheery greeting is the best sermon in the world, and the
finest sort of preaching. Just the example of living honestly and
speaking truthfully and always lending a hand to the fellow who is in
trouble or discouraged, is a fine sermon, for there is not a man or
boy living whose life and actions do not have an influence for good or
bad on some one else. We do not always realize this, but it is true.

Grenfell little dreamed of the future that this voyage was to open to
him. He knew little or nothing at that time of Labrador or
Newfoundland. He had never seen an Eskimo nor an American Indian,
unless he had chanced to visit a "wild west" show. He had no other
expectation than that he should make a single winter cruise with the
mission schooner, and then return to England and settle in some
promising locality to the practice of his profession, there to rise to
success or fade into hum-drum obscurity, as Providence might will.

The fishermen of the North Sea fleet were as rough and ready as the
old buccaneers. They were constantly risking their lives and they had
not much regard for their own lives or the lives of others. With them
life was cheap. Night and day they faced the dangers of the sea as
they worked at the trawls, and when they were not sleeping or working
there was no amusement for them. Then they were prone to resort to the
grog ships, which hovered around them, and they too often drank a
great deal more rum than was good for them. They were reared to a
rough and cruel life, these fishermen. Hard punishments were dealt the
men by the skippers. It was the way of the sea, as they knew it.

There were more than twenty thousand of these men in the North Sea
fleets. Grenfell must have been overwhelmed with the thought that he
was to be the only doctor within reach of that great number of men.
"Heal the sick"--that was his job!

But he resolved to do much more than that! He was going to "Preach the
Word" in smiles and cheering words, and was going to help the men in
other ways than with his pill box and surgical bandages. As a doctor
he realized how harmful liquor was to them, and he was going to fight
the grog ships and do his best to put them out of business. In a
word, he was not only going to doctor the men but he was going to help
them to live straight, clean lives. He was going to play the game as
he had played foot ball or pulled his oar with the winning crew at
college. He was going to put into it the best that was in him!

That was the way Grenfell always did everything he undertook. When he
had to pummel the "old boy" at Marlborough College he did it the best
he knew how. Now he had a big job on his hands. He resolved,
figuratively, to pummel the rum ships, and he was already planning and
inventing ways that would make the men's lives easier. He went into
the thing with his characteristic zeal, determined to make good. It is
a mighty fine thing to make good. Any of us can make good if we go at
things in the way Grenfell went at them--determined, whatever
obstacles arise, not to fail. Grenfell never whined about luck going
against him. He made his own luck. That is the mark of every
successful and big man.

"There are the fleets," said the skipper one day, pointing out over
the bow. "We'll make a round of the fleets, and you'll have a chance
to get busy patching the men up."

And he was busy. There came as many patients every day as any young
doctor could wish to treat. But that was what Grenfell wanted.

As the skipper suggested, the mission boat made a tour of the fleets,
of which there were several, each fleet with its own name and colours
and commanded by an Admiral. There were the Columbias, the Rashers,
the Great Northerners and many others. It was finally with the Great
Northerners that the mission boat took its station.

Grenfell visited among the vessels and made friends among the men, who
were like big boys, rough and ready. They were always prepared to go
into daring ventures. They never flinched at danger. Few of them had
ever enjoyed the privilege of going to school, and none of the men and
few of the skippers could write. They could read the compass just as
men who cannot read can tell the time of day from the clock. But they
had their method of dead reckoning and always appeared to know where
they were, even though land had not been sighted for days.

Most of these men had been apprentised to the vessels as boys and had
followed the sea all their lives. There were always many apprentised
boys on the ships, and these worked without other pay than clothing,
food and a little pocket money until they were twenty-one years of
age. In many cases they received little consideration from the
skippers and sometimes were treated with unnecessary roughness and
even cruelty.

From the beginning Doctor Grenfell devoted himself not only to healing
the sick, but also to bettering the condition of the fishermen. His
skill was applied to the healing of their moral as well as their
physical ills. Of necessity their life was a rough and rugged one, but
there were opportunities to introduce some pleasure into it and to
make it happier in many ways. Here was a strong human call that, from
the beginning, Grenfell could not resist.

Using his own influence together with the influence of other good men,
necessary funds were raised to meet the expenses of additional mission
ships, and additional doctors and workers were sent out. Those
selected were not only doctors, but men who were qualified by
character and ability to guide the seamen to better and cleaner and
more wholesome living. Queen Victoria became interested. The grog
ships were finally driven from the sea. Laws were enacted to better
conditions upon the fishing vessels that the lives of the fishermen
might be easier and happier. In the course of time, as the result of
Grenfell's tireless efforts, a marvelous change for the better took
place.

Thus the years passed. Dr. Grenfell, who in the beginning had given
his services to the Mission for a single winter, still remained. He
felt it a duty that he could not desert. The work was hard, and it
denied him the private practice and the home life to which he had
looked forward so hopefully. He never had the time to drive fine
horses about the country as he visited patients. But he had no
regrets. He had chosen to accept and share the life of the fishermen
on the high seas. It was no less a service to his country and to
mankind than the service of the soldier fighting in the trenches. When
he saw the need and heard the call he was willing enough to sacrifice
personal ambitions that he might help others to become finer, better
men, and live nobler happier lives.

Looking back over that period there is no doubt that Doctor Grenfell
feels a thousand times repaid for any sacrifices he may have made. It
is always that way. When we give up something for the other fellow, or
do some fine thing to help him, our pleasure at the happiness we have
given him makes us somehow forget ourselves and all we have given up.

And so came the year 1891. It was in that year that a member of the
Mission Board returned from a visit to Canada and Newfoundland and
reported to the Board great need of work among the Newfoundland
fishermen similar to that that had been done by Grenfell in the North
Sea.

The members of the Board were stirred by what they heard, and it was
decided to send a ship across the Atlantic. It was necessary that the
man in command be a doctor understanding the work to be done. It was
also necessary that he should be a man of high executive and
administrative ability, capable of organizing and carrying it on
successfully. The man that has made good is the man always looked for
to occupy such a post. Grenfell had made good in the North Sea. His
work there indeed had been a brilliant success. He was the one man the
Board thought of, and he was asked to go.

He accepted. Here was a new field of work and adventure offering ever
greater possibilities than the old, and he never hesitated about it.

He began preparations for the new enterprise at once. The _Albert_, a
little ketch-rigged vessel of ninety-seven tons register, was
selected. Iron hatches were put into her, she was sheathed with
greenhart to withstand the pressure of ice, and thoroughly refitted.
Captain Trevize, a Cornishman, was engaged as skipper. Though Doctor
Grenfell was himself a master mariner and thoroughly qualified as a
navigator, he had never crossed the Atlantic, and in any case he was
to be fully occupied with other duties. There was a crew of eight men
including the mate, Skipper Joe White, a famous skipper of the North
Sea fleets.

On June 15, 1892, the _Albert_ was towed out of Great Yarmouth Harbor,
and that day she spread her sails and set her course westward. The
great work of Doctor Grenfell's life was now to begin. All the years
of toil on the North Sea had been but an introduction to it and a
preparation for it. His little vessel was to carry him to the bleak
and desolate coast of Labrador and into the ice fields of the North.
He was to meet new and strange people, and he was destined to
experience many stirring adventures.




IV

DOWN ON THE LABRADOR


Heavy seas and head winds met the _Albert_, and she ran in at the
Irish port of Cookhaven to await better weather. In a day or two she
again spread her canvas, Fastnet Rock, at the south end of Ireland,
the last land of the Old World to be seen, was lost to view, and in
heavy weather she pointed her bow toward St. Johns, Newfoundland.

Twelve days later, in a thick fog, a huge iceberg loomed suddenly up
before them, and the _Albert_ barely missed a collision that might
have ended the mission. It was the first iceberg that Doctor Grenfell
had ever seen. Presently, and through the following years, they were
to become as familiar to him as the trees of the forests.

Four hundred years had passed since Cabot on his voyage of discovery
had, in his little caraval, passed over the same course that Grenfell
now sailed in the _Albert_. Nineteen days after Fastnet Rock was lost
to view, the shores of Newfoundland rose before them. That was fine
sailing for the landfall was made almost exactly opposite St. Johns.

The harbor of St. Johns is like a great bowl. The entrance is a narrow
passage between high, beetling cliffs rising on either side. From the
sea the city is hidden by hills flanked by the cliffs, and a vessel
must enter the narrow gateway and pass nearly through it before the
city of St. Johns is seen rising from the water's edge upon sloping
hill-sides on the opposite side of the harbor. It is one of the safest
as well as most picturesque harbors in the world.

As the _Albert_ approached the entrance Doctor Grenfell and the crew
were astonished to see clouds of smoke rising from within and
obscuring the sky. As they passed the cliffs waves of scorching air
met them.

The city was in flames. Much of it was already in ashes. Stark,
blackened chimneys rose where buildings had once stood. Flames were
still shooting upward from those as yet but partly consumed. Some of
the vessels anchored in the harbor were ablaze. Everything had been
destroyed or was still burning. The Colonial public buildings, the
fine churches, the great warehouses that had lined the wharves, even
the wharves themselves, were smouldering ruins, and scarcely a private
house remained. It was a scene of complete and terrible desolation.
The fire had even extended to the forests beyond the city, and for
weeks afterward continued to rage and carry destruction to quiet,
scattered homes of the country.

[Illustration: "THE LABRADOR 'LIVEYERE'"]

The cause or origin of the fire no one knew. It had come as a
devastating scourge. It had left the beautiful little city a mass of
blackened, smoking ruins.

The Newfoundlanders are as fine and brave a people as ever lived. Deep
trouble had come to them, but they met it with their characteristic
heroism. No one was whining, or wringing his hands, or crying out
against God. They were accepting it all as cheerfully as any people
can ever accept so sweeping a calamity. Benjamin Franklin said, "God
helps them that help themselves." That is as true of a city as it is
of a person. That is what the St. Johns people were doing, and
already, while the fire still burned, they were making plans to take
care of themselves and rebuild their city.

Of course Doctor Grenfell could do little to help with his one small
ship, but he did what he could. The officials and the people found
time to welcome him and to tell him how glad they were that he was to
go to Labrador to heal the sick of their fleets and make the lives of
the fishermen and the natives of the northern coast happier and
pleasanter.

A pilot was necessary to guide the _Albert_ along the uncharted coast
of Labrador. Captain Nicholas Fitzgerald was provided by the
Newfoundland government to serve in this capacity. Doctor Grenfell
invited Mr. Adolph Neilson, Superintendent of Fisheries for
Newfoundland, to accompany them, and he accepted the invitation, that
he might lend his aid to getting the work of the mission started. He
proved a valuable addition to the party. Then the _Albert_ sailed away
to cruise her new field of service.

It will be interesting to turn to a map and see for ourselves the
country to which Doctor Grenfell was going. We will find Labrador in
the northeastern corner of the North American continent, just as
Alaska is in the northwestern corner.

Like Alaska, Labrador is a great peninsula and is nearly, though not
quite, so large as Alaska. Some maps will show only a narrow strip
along the Atlantic east of the peninsula marked "Labrador." This is
incorrect. The whole peninsula, bounded on the south by the Gulf of
St. Lawrence and Straits of Belle Isle, the east by the Atlantic
Ocean, the north by Hudson Straits, the west by Hudson Bay and James
Bay and the Province of Quebec, is included in Labrador. The narrow
strip on the east is under the jurisdiction of Newfoundland, while the
remainder is owned by Quebec. Newfoundland is the oldest colony of
Great Britain. It is not a part of Canada, but has a separate
government.

The only people living in the interior of Labrador are a few wandering
Indians who live by hunting. There are still large parts of the
interior that have never been explored by white men, and of which we
know little or no more than was known of America when Columbus
discovered the then new world.

The people who live on the coast are white men, half-breeds and
Eskimos. None of these ever go far inland, and they live by fishing,
hunting, and trapping animals for the fur. Those on the south, as far
east as Blanc Sablon, on the straits of Belle Isle, speak French.
Eastward from Blanc Sablon and northward to a point a little north of
Indian Harbor at the northern side of the entrance of Hamilton Inlet,
English is spoken. The language on the remainder of the coast is
Eskimo, and nearly all of the people are Eskimos. Once upon a time the
Eskimos lived and hunted on the southern coast along the Straits of
Belle Isle, but only white people and half-breeds are now found south
of Hamilton Inlet.

The Labrador coast from Cape Charles in the south to Cape Chidley in
the north is scoured as clean as the paving stones of a street. Naked,
desolate, forbidding it lies in a somber mist. In part it is low and
ragged but as we pass north it gradually rises into bare slopes and
finally in the vicinity of Nachbak Bay high mountains, perpendicular
and grey, stand out against the sky.

Behind the storm-scoured rocky islands lie the bays and tickles and
runs and at the head of the bays the forest begins, reaching back over
rolling hills into the mysterious and unknown regions beyond. There
is not one beaten road in all the land. There is no sandy beach, no
grassy bank, no green field. Nature has been kind to Labrador,
however, in one respect. There are innumerable harbors snugly
sheltered behind the islands and well out of reach of the rolling
breakers and the wind. There is an old saying down on the Labrador
that "from one peril there are two ways of escape to three sheltered
places." The ice and fog are always perils but the skippers of the
coast appear to hold them in disdain and plunge forward through storm
and sea when any navigator on earth would expect to meet disaster. For
the most part the coast is uncharted and the skippers, many of whom
never saw an instrument of navigation in their life, or at least never
owned one, sail by rhyme:

    "When Joe Bett's P'int you is abreast,
    Dane's Rock bears due west.
    West-nor'west you must steer,
    'Til Brimstone Head do appear.

    "The tickle's narrow, not very wide;
    The deepest water's on the starboard side
    When in the harbor you is shot,
    Four fathoms you has got."

It is an evil coast, with hidden reefs and islands scattered like dust
its whole length. "The man who sails the Labrador must know it all
like his own back yard--not in sunny weather alone, but in the night,
when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when
the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his
whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish
from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It
is thus, often, that the Doctor gets along."

Labrador has an Arctic climate in winter. The extreme cold of the
country is caused by the Arctic current washing its shores. All winter
the ocean is frozen as far as one can see. In June, when the ice
breaks away, the great Newfoundland fishing fleet of little schooners
sails north to remain until the end of September catching cod, for
here are the finest cod fishing grounds in the world.

In 1892 there were nearly twenty-five thousand Newfoundlanders on this
fleet. Doctor Grenfell's mission was to aid and assist these deep sea
fishermen. In those days there was no doctor with the fleet and none
on the whole coast, and any one taken seriously ill or badly injured
usually died for lack of medical or surgical care. Of course, Grenfell
was also to help the people who lived on the coast, that is, the
native inhabitants, who needed him. This service he was giving free.

At this season there is more fog than sunshine in those northern
latitudes. It settles in a dense pall over the sea, adding to the
dangers of navigation. Now the fog was so thick that they could
scarcely see the length of the vessel. On the fourth day out the fog
lifted for a brief time, and Cape Bauld the northeasterly point of
Newfoundland Island, showed his grim old head, as if to bid them
goodbye and to wish them good luck "down on The Labrador." Then they
were again swallowed by the fog and plunged into the rough seas where
the Straits of Belle Isle meet the wide ocean.

No more land was seen, as they ploughed northward through the fog,
until August 4th. This was a Thursday. Like the lifting of a curtain
on a stage the fog, all at once, melted away, to reveal a scene of
marvellous though rugged beauty. As though touched by a hand of magic,
the atmosphere, for so many days dank and thick, suddenly became
brilliantly clear and transparent, and the sun shone bright and warm.

Off the port bow lay The Labrador, the great silent peninsula of the
north. Doctor Grenfell turned to it with a thrill. Here was the land
he had come so far to see! Here he would find the people to whom he
was to devote his life work!

There before him lay her scattered islands, her grim and rocky
headlands and beetling cliffs, and beyond the islands, rolling away
into illimitable blue distances her seared hills and the vast unknown
region of her interior, whose mysterious secrets she had kept locked
within her heart through all time. Back there, hidden from the world,
were numberless lakes and rivers and mountains that no white man had
ever seen.

[Illustration: "SAILS NORTH TO REMAIN UNTIL THE END OF SUMMER CATCHING
COD"]

The sea rose and fell in a lazy swell. Not far away a school of whales
were playing, now and again spouting geysers of water high into the
air. Shoals of caplin[A] gave silver flashes upon the surface of the
sea where thousands of the little fish crowded one another to the
surface of the water. Countless birds and sea fowl hovered before the
face of the cliffs and above the placid sea.

A half hundred icebergs, children of age-old glaciers of the far
North, were scattered over the green-blue waters. Some of them were of
gigantic proportions and strange outlines. There were hills with lofty
summits, marvellous castles, turreted and towered, and majestic
cathedrals, their icy pinnacles and spires reaching high above the
top-masts of the ship and their polished adamantine surfaces sparkling
in the brilliant sunshine and scintillating fire and colour with the
wondrous iridescent beauty of mammoth opals.

"There's Domino Run," said the pilot.

"Domino Run? What is that?"

"'Tis a fine deep run behind the islands," explained the pilot. "All
the fleets of schooners cruisin' north and south go through Domino
Run. There's a fine tidy harbor in there, and we'd be findin' some
schooners anchored there now."

"We'll go in and see."

"I think 'twould be well and meet some of the fleet. There's liviyeres
in there too. There's some liviyeres handy to most of the harbors on
the coast."

"Liveyeres? What are liveyeres?"

"They're the folk that live on the coast all the time,--the whites and
half-breeds. Newfoundlanders only come to fish in summer, but
liveyeres stay the winter. The shop keepers we calls planters. They're
set up by traders that has fishin' places. The liveyeres has their
homes up the heads of bays in winter, and when the ice fastens over
they trap fur. In the summer they come out to the islands to fish."

Doctor Grenfell had heard all this before, but now as he looked at the
dreary desolation of the rocks it seemed almost incredible that
children could be born and grow to manhood and womanhood and live
their lives here, forever fighting for mere existence, and die at last
without ever once knowing the comforts that we who live in kindlier
warmer lands enjoy.

Presently a beautiful and splendid harbor opened before the _Albert_.
Several schooners were lying at anchor within the harbor's shelter,
and the strange new ship created a vast sensation as she hove to and
dropped her anchor among them, and hoisted the blue flag of the Deep
Sea Mission.

From masthead after masthead rose flags of greeting. It was a glorious
welcome for any visitor to receive. A warmer or more cordial greeting
could scarcely have been offered the Governor General himself. It was
given with the fine hearty fervour and characteristic hospitality of
the Newfoundland fishermen and seamen.

The _Albert's_ anchor chains had scarce ceased to rattle before boats
were pulling toward her from every vessel in the harbor. Ships enough
sailed down the coast, to be sure, but if they were not fishing
vessels they were traders looking to barter for fish, bearing sharp
men who drove hard bargains with the fishermen, as we shall see. But
here was a different vessel from any of them. Everybody knew that
_this_ was not a fisherman, and that she was _not_ a trader. What
_was_ her business? What had she come for? What did her blue flag
mean? These were questions to which everybody must needs find the
answer for himself.

Great was their joy when it was learned that the _Albert_ was a
hospital ship with a real doctor aboard come to care for and heal
their sick and injured, and that the doctor made no charge for his
services or his medicine. This was a big point that went to their
hearts, for there was scarce a man among them with any money in his
pocket, and if Doctor Grenfell had charged them money they could not
have called upon him to help them, for they could not have paid him.
But here he was ready to serve them without money and without price.
The richest, who were poor enough, and the poorest, could alike have
his care and medicine. Here, indeed, was cause to wonder and rejoice.

Many of the fishermen took their families with them to live in little
huts at the fishing places during the summer, and to help them prepare
the fish for market. Forty or fifty men, women and children were
packed, like figs in a box, on some of the schooners, with no other
sleeping place than under the deck, on top of the cargo of provisions
and salt in the hold, wherever they could find a place big enough to
squeeze and stow themselves. Under such conditions there were ailing
people enough on the schooners who needed a doctor's care.

The mail boat from St. Johns came once a fortnight, to be sure, and
she had a doctor aboard her. But he could only see for a moment the
more serious cases, and not all of them, hurriedly leave some medicine
and go, and then he would not return to see them again in another two
weeks. The mail boat had a schedule to make, and the time given her
for the voyage between St. Johns and The Labrador was all too short,
and she never reached the northernmost coast.

There were calls enough from the very beginning to keep Doctor
Grenfell busy with the sick folk of the schooners. All that day the
people came, and it was late that evening when the sick on the
schooners had been cared for and the last of the visitors had
departed.

Thus, on that first day in this new land, in the Harbor of Domino Run,
Doctor Grenfell's life work among the deep sea fishermen of The
Labrador began in earnest.

But even yet Doctor Grenfell's day's work was not to end. He was to
witness a scene that would sicken his heart and excite his deepest
pity. An experience awaited him that was to guide him to new and
greater plans and to bigger things than he had yet dreamed of.

For a long while a rickety old rowboat had been lying off from the
_Albert_. A bronzed and bearded man sat alone in the boat, eyeing the
strange vessel as though afraid to approach nearer. He was thin and
gaunt. The evening was chilly, but he was poorly clad, and his
clothing was as ragged and as tattered as his old boat.

Finally, as though fearing to intrude, and not sure of his reception,
he hailed the _Albert_.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] A small fish about the size of a smelt.




V

THE RAGGED MAN IN THE RICKETY BOAT


Grenfell, who had been standing at the rail for some time watching the
decrepid old boat and its strange occupant, answered the hail
cheerily.

"Be there a doctor aboard, sir?" asked the man.

"Yes," answered Grenfell. "I'm a doctor."

"Us were hearin' now they's a doctor on your vessel," said the man
with satisfaction. "Be you a _real_ doctor, sir?"

"Yes," assured the Doctor. "I hope I am."

"They's a man ashore that's wonderful bad off, but us hasn't no
money," suggested the man, adding expectantly, "You couldn't come to
doctor he now could you, sir?"

"Certainly I will," assured the Doctor. "What's the matter with the
man? Do you know?"

"He have a distemper in his chest, sir, and a wonderful bad cough,"
explained the man.

"All right," said the Doctor. "I'll go at once. How far is it?"

"Right handy, sir," said the man with evident relief.

"Pull alongside and I'll be with you in a jiffy," and the Doctor
hurried below for his medicine case.

The man was alongside waiting for him when he returned a few moments
later, and he stepped into the rickety old boat. As the liveyere rowed
away Grenfell may have thought of his own famous flat-boat that sank
with him and his brother in the estuary below Parkgate years before
when they were left to swim for it. But in his mental comparison it is
probable that the flat-boat, even in her oldest and most decrepid
days, would have passed for a rather fine and seaworthy craft in
contrast to this rickety old rowboat. The boat kept afloat, however,
and presently the liveyere pulled it alongside the gray rock that
served for a landing. They stepped out and the guide led the way up
the rocks to a lonely and miserable little sod hut. At the door he
halted.

"Here we is, sir," he announced. "Step right in. They'll be wonderful
glad to see you, sir."

Grenfell entered. Within was a room perhaps twelve by fourteen feet in
size. A single small window of pieces of glass patched together was
designed to admit light and at the same time to exclude God's good
fresh air. The floor was of earth, partially paved with small round
stones. Built against the walls were six berths, fashioned after the
model of ship's berths, three lower and three upper ones. A broken old
stove, with its pipe extending through the roof into a mud protection
rising upon the peak outside in lieu of a chimney, made a smoky
attempt to heat the place. The lower berths and floor served as seats.
There was no furniture.

The walls of the hut were damp. The atmosphere was dank and
unwholesome and heavy with the ill-smelling odor of stale seal oil and
fish. The place was dirty and as unsanitary and unhealthful as any
human habitation could well be.

Six ragged, half-starved little children huddled timidly into a corner
upon the entrance of the visitor from the ship and gazed at the Doctor
with wide-open frightened eyes. In one of the lower bunks lay the sick
man coughing himself to death. At his side a gaunt woman, miserably
and scantily clothed, was offering him water in a spoon.

It was evident to the trained eye of the Doctor that the man was
fatally ill and could live but a short time. He was a hopeless
consumptive, and a hasty examination revealed the fact that he was
also suffering from a severe attack of pneumonia.

Doctor Grenfell's big sympathetic heart went out to the poor sufferer
and his destitute family. What could he do? How could he help the man
in such a place? He might remove him to one of the clean, white
hospital cots on the _Albert_, but it would scarcely serve to make
easier the impending death, and the exposure and effort of the
transfer might even hasten it. Then, too, the wife and children would
be denied the satisfaction of the last moments with the departing
soul of the husband and father, for the _Albert_ was to sail at once.
The summer was short, and up and down the coast many others were in
sore need of the Doctor's care, and delay might cost some of them
their lives.

Grenfell sat silently for several minutes observing his patient and
asking himself the question: "What can I do for this poor man?" If
there had only been a doctor that the man could have called a few days
earlier his life, at least might have been prolonged.

There was but one answer to the question. There was nothing to do but
leave medicine and give advice and directions for the man's care, and
to supply the ill-nourished family much-needed food and perhaps some
warmer clothing.

If there were only a hospital on the coast where such cases could be
taken and properly treated! If there were only some place where
fatherless and orphaned children could be cared for! These were some
of the thoughts that crowded upon Doctor Grenfell as he left the hut
that evening and was rowed back to the _Albert_. And in the weeks that
followed his mind was filled with plans, for never did the picture of
the dying man and helpless little ones fade as he saw it that first
day in Domino Run.

Another call to go ashore came that evening, and the Doctor answered
it promptly. Again he was guided to a little mud hut, but this had an
advantage over the other in that it was well ventilated. The one
window which it boasted was an open hole in the side wall with no
glass or other covering to exclude the fresh air. There was no stove,
and an open fire on the earthen floor supplied warmth, while a large
opening in the roof, for there was no chimney, offered an escape for
the smoke, an offer of which the smoke did not freely take advantage.

On a wooden bench in a corner of the room a man sat doubled up with
pain. Here too was a family consisting of the man's wife and several
children.

"What's the trouble?" asked the Doctor.

"I'm wonderful bad with a distemper in my insides, sir," answered the
man with a groan.

"Been ill long?"

"Aye, sir, for three weeks."

"We'll see what can be done."

"Thank you, sir."

"We'll patch you up and make you as well as ever in a little while,"
assured the Doctor after a thorough examination, for this proved to be
a curable case.

"That'll be fine, sir."

Medicine was provided, with directions for taking, and, as the Doctor
had promised, and as he later learned, the man soon recovered his
health and returned to his fishing.

The _Albert_ sailed north. Into every little harbor and settlement
she dropped her anchor for a visit. She called at the trading posts of
the old Hudson's Bay Company at Cartwright, Rigolet and Davis Inlet
and the Moravian Missions among the Eskimos in the North. She was
welcomed everywhere, and everywhere Doctor Grenfell found so many sick
or injured people that the whole summer long he was kept constantly
busy.

The waters of this coast were unknown to him. He knew nothing of their
tides or reefs or currents. But with confidence in himself and a
courage that was well-nigh reckless, he sought out the people of every
little harbor that he might give them the help that he had come to
give. If there was too great a hazard for the schooner, he used a
whale-boat. Once this whale-boat was blown out to sea, once it was
driven upon the rocks, once it capsized with all on board, and before
the summer ended it became a complete wreck.

Nine hundred cases were treated, some trivial though perhaps painful
enough maladies, others most serious or even hopeless. Here was a
tooth to be extracted, there a limb to be amputated,--cases of all
kinds and descriptions, with never a doctor to whom the people could
turn for relief until Doctor Grenfell providentially appeared.

With all the work, the voyage was one of pleasure. Not only the
pleasure of making others happier,--the greatest pleasure any one can
know,--but it was a rattling fine adventure finding the way among
islands that had never appeared on any map and were still unnamed. It
was fine fun, too, cruising deep and magnificent fjords past lofty
towering cliffs, and exploring new channels. And there were the
Eskimos and their great wolfish dogs, and their primitive manner of
living and dressing. It was all interesting and fascinating.

Never, however, since that August night in Domino Run, had the little
mud hut, the dying man, the grief-stricken, miserable mother, and the
neglected and starving little ones been out of Doctor Grenfell's
thoughts, and often enough his big heart had ached for the stricken
ones. He had never before witnessed such awful depths of poverty.

In other harbors that he had visited in his northern voyage similar
heartrending cases had, to be sure, fallen under his attention. In one
harbor he found a poor Eskimo both of whose hands had been blown off
by the premature discharge of a gun. For days and days the man had
endured indescribable agony. Nothing had been done for him, save to
bathe the stubs of his shattered arms in cold water, until Doctor
Grenfell appeared, for there was no surgeon to call upon to relieve
the sufferer.

Everywhere there was a mute cry for help. The people were in need of
doctors and hospitals. They were in need of hospital ships to cruise
the coast and visit the sick of the harbors. They were in need of
clothing that they were unable to purchase for themselves. They were
in great need of some one to devise a way that would help them to free
themselves from the ancient truck system that kept them forever
hopelessly in debt to the traders.

The case of the man in the little mud hut at Domino Run, however,
first suggested to Grenfell the need of these things and the thought
that he might do something to bring them about. As a result of this
visit, he made, during his northward cruise, a most thorough
investigation of the requirements of the coast.

It was early October, and snow covered the ground, when the _Albert_,
sailing south, again entered Domino Run and anchored in the harbor.
Grenfell was put ashore and walked up the trail to the hut. The man
had long since died and been laid to rest. The wife and children were
still there. They had no provisions for the winter, and Grenfell, we
may be sure, did all in his power to help them and make them more
comfortable.

His plans had crystalized. He had determined upon the course he should
take. He would go back to England and exert himself to the utmost to
raise funds to build hospitals and to provide additional doctors and
nurses for The Labrador. He would return to Labrador himself and give
his life and strength and the best that was in him for the rest of his
days in an attempt to make these people happier. Grenfell the athlete,
the football player, the naturalist, and, above all, the doctor, was
ready to answer the human call and to sacrifice his own comfort and
ease and worldly possessions to the needs of these people. The man
that will freely give his life to relieve the suffering of others
represents the highest type of manhood. It is divine. It was
characteristic of Grenfell.

And so it came about that the ragged man in the rickety boat who led
Doctor Grenfell to the dying man in the mud hut was the indirect means
of bringing hospitals and stores and many fine things to The Labrador
that the coast had never known before. The ragged man in going for the
doctor was simply doing a kindly act, a good turn for a needy
neighbor. What magnificent results may come from one little act of
kindness! This one laid the foundation for a work whose fame has
encircled the world.




VI

OVERBOARD!


When Grenfell set out to do a thing he did it. He never in all his
life said, "I will if I can." His motto has always been, "I _can_ if I
will." He had determined to plant hospitals on the Labrador coast and
to send doctors and nurses there to help the people. When he
determined to do a thing there was an end of it. It would be done. A
great many people plan to do things, but when they find it is hard to
carry out their plans, they give them up. They forget that anything
that is worth having is hard to get. If diamonds were as easy to find
as pebbles they would be worth no more than pebbles.

That was a hard job that Grenfell had set himself, and he knew it.
When you have a hard job to do, the best way is to go at it just as
soon as ever you can and work at it as hard as ever you can until it
is done. That was Grenfell's way, and as soon as he reached St. Johns
he began to start things moving. Someone else might have waited to
return to England to make a formal report to the Deep Sea Missions
Board, and await the Board's approval. Not so with Grenfell. He knew
the Board would approve, and time was valuable.

Down on The Labrador winter begins in earnest in October. Already the
fishing fleets had returned from Labrador when the _Albert_ reached
St. Johns, and the fishermen had brought with them the news of the
_Albert_'s visit to The Labrador and the wonderful things Doctor
Grenfell had done in the course of his summer's cruise. Praise of his
magnificent work was on everybody's lips. The newspapers, always
hungry for startling news, had published articles about it. Doctor
Grenfell was hailed as a benefactor. All creeds and classes welcomed
and praised him,--fishermen, merchants, politicians. Even the
dignified Board of Trade had recorded its praise.

It was November when Grenfell arrived in St. Johns. He immediately
waited upon the government officials with the result that His
Excellency, the Governor of the Colony, at once called a meeting in
the Government House that Grenfell might present his plans for the
future to the people. All the great men of the Colony were there. They
listened with interest and were moved with enthusiasm. Some fine
things were said, and then with the unanimous vote of the meeting
resolutions were passed in commendation of Doctor Grenfell's summer's
work and expressing the desire that it might continue and grow in
accordance with Doctor Grenfell's plans. The resolutions finally
pledged the "co-operation of all classes of this community." Here was
an assurance that the whole of the fine old Colony was behind him, and
it made Grenfell happy.

But this was not all. It is not the way of Newfoundland people to hold
meetings and say fine things and pass high-sounding resolutions and
then let the whole matter drop as though they felt they had done their
duty. Doctor Grenfell would need something more than fine words and
pats on the back if he were to put his plans through successfully,
though the fine words helped, too, with their encouragement. He would
need the help of men of responsibility who would work with him, and
His Excellency, the Governor, recognizing this fact, appointed a
committee composed of some of Newfoundland's best men for this
purpose.

Then it was that Mr. W. Baine Grieve arose and began to speak. Mr.
Grieve was a famous merchant of the Colony, and a member of the firm
of Baine Johnston and Company, who owned a large trading station and
stores at Battle Harbor, on an island near Cape Charles, at the
southeastern extremity of Labrador. He was a man of importance in St.
Johns and a leader in the Colony. As he spoke Grenfell suddenly
realized that Mr. Grieve was presenting the Mission with a building at
Battle Harbor which was to be fitted as a hospital and made ready for
use the following summer.

What a thrill must have come to Grenfell at that moment! The whole
Newfoundland government was behind him! His first hospital was already
assured! We can easily imagine that he was fairly overwhelmed and
dazed with the success that he had met so suddenly and unexpectedly.

But Grenfell was not a man to lose his head. This was only a
beginning. He must have more hospitals than one. He must have doctors
and nurses, medicines and hospital supplies, food and clothing, and a
steam vessel that would take him quickly about to see the sick of the
harbors. A great deal of money would be required, and when the
_Albert_ sailed out of St. John's Harbor and turned back to England he
knew that he had assumed a stupendous job, and that the winter was not
to be an idle one for him by any means.

It was December first when the _Albert_ reached England. With the
backing and assistance of the Mission Board, Doctor Grenfell and
Captain Trevize of the _Albert_ arranged a speaking tour for the
purpose of exciting interest in the Labrador work. Men and women were
moved by the tale of their experiences and the suffering and needs of
the fishermen and liveres. Gifts were made and sufficient funds
subscribed to purchase necessary supplies and hospital equipment, and
a fine rowboat was donated to replace the _Albert's_ whaleboat which
had been smashed during the previous summer.

Then word came from St. Johns that the great shipping firm of Job
Brothers, who owned a fisheries' station at Indian Harbor, had donated
a hospital to the Newfoundland committee. This was to be erected at
Indian Harbor, at the northern side of the entrance to Hamilton Inlet,
two hundred miles north of Battle Harbor, and was to be ready for use
during the summer. This was fine news. Not only were there large
fishery stations at both Battle Harbor and Indian Harbor, but both
were regular stopping places for the fishing schooners when going
north and again on their homeward voyage. With two hospitals on the
coast a splendid beginning for the work would be made.

But there was still one necessity lacking,--a little steamer in which
Doctor Grenfell could visit the folk of the scattered harbors. At
Chester on the River Dee and not far from his boyhood home at Parkgate
Grenfell discovered a boat one day that was for sale and that he
believed would answer his purpose. It was a sturdy little steam
launch, forty-five feet over all. It was, however, ridiculously
narrow, with a beam of only eight feet, and was sure to roll terribly
in any sea and even in an ordinary swell.

But Grenfell was a good seaman, and he could make out in a boat that
did a bit of tumbling. He was the sort of man to do a good job with a
tool that did not suit him if he could not get just the sort of tool
he wanted, and never find fault with it either. The necessary amount
to purchase the launch was subscribed by a friend of the Mission.
Grenfell bought it and was mightily pleased that this last need was
filled. Later the little launch was christened the "Princess May."

Then the _Albert_ was made ready for her second voyage to Labrador.
The Mission Board appointed two young physicians to accompany Doctor
Grenfell, Doctor Arthur O. Bobardt and Doctor Eliott Curwen, and two
trained nurses, Miss Cecilia Williams and Miss Ada Cawardine, that
there might be a doctor and a nurse for the hospital at Battle Harbor
and a doctor and a nurse for the hospital at Indian Harbor. The launch
_Princess May_ was swung aboard the big Allan liner _Corean_ and
shipped to St. John's, and on June second Doctor Grenfell and his
staff sailed from Queenstown on the _Albert_.

Grenfell was as fond of sports as ever he was in his boyhood and
college days, and now, when the weather permitted, he played cricket
with any on board who would play with him. The deck of so small a
vessel as the _Albert_ offers small space for a game of this sort, and
one after another the cricket balls were lost overboard until but one
remained. Then, one day, in the midst of a game in mid-ocean, that
last ball unceremoniously followed the others into the sea.

Grenfell ran to the rail. He could see the ball rise on a wave astern.

"Tack back and pick me up!" he yelled to the helmsman, and to the
astonishment and consternation of everyone, over the rail he dived in
pursuit of the ball.

Grenfell could swim like a fish. He learned that in the River Dee and
the estuary, when he was a boy, and he always kept himself in athletic
training. But he had never before jumped into the middle of so large a
swimming pool as the Atlantic ocean, with the nearest land a thousand
miles away!

The steersman lost his head. He put over the helm, but failed to cut
Grenfell off, and the Doctor presently found himself a long way from
the ship struggling for life in the icy cold waters of the North
Atlantic.




VII

IN THE BREAKERS


The young adventurer did not lose his head, and he did not waste his
strength in desperate efforts to overtake the vessel. He calmly
laid-to, kept his head above water, and waited for the helmsman to
bring the ship around again.

A man less inured to hardships, or less physically fit, would have
surrendered to the icy waters or to fatigue. Grenfell was as fit as
ever a man could be.

In school and college he had made a record in athletic sports, and
since leaving the university he had not permitted himself to get out
of training. An athlete cannot keep in condition who indulges in
cigarettes or liquor or otherwise dissipates, and Grenfell had lived
clean and straight.

It was this that saved his life now. He knew he was fit and he had
confidence in himself, and was unafraid. While he appreciated his
peril, he never lost his nerve, and when finally he was rescued and
found himself on deck he was little the worse for his experience, and
with a change of dry clothing was ready to resume the interrupted game
of cricket with the rescued ball.

With no further adventure than once coming to close quarters with an
iceberg and escaping without serious damage, the _Albert_ arrived in
due time at St. John's, and Grenfell was at once occupied in
preparation for his summer's work on The Labrador. Materials with
which to construct the Indian Harbor hospital were shipped north by
steamer. Supplies were taken aboard the _Albert_, and with Dr. Curwin
and nurses Williams and Cawardine she sailed for Battle Harbor, where
the building to be utilized as a hospital was already erected.

Then the launch _Princess May_, which had been landed from the
_Corean_, was made ready for sea, and with an engineer and a cook as
his crew and Dr. Bobardt as a companion, Dr. Grenfell as skipper put
to sea in the tiny craft on July 7th.

There were many pessimistic prophets to see the _Princess May_ off.
From skipper to cook not a man aboard her was familiar with the coast,
or could recognize a single landmark or headland either on the
Newfoundland coast or on The Labrador.

They were going into rugged, fog-clogged seas. They might encounter an
ice-pack, and the sea was always strewn with menacing icebergs. True,
they had charts, but the charts were most incomplete, and no
Newfoundlander sails by them.

The _Princess May_, a mere cockle-shell, was too small, it was said,
for the undertaking. She was six years old and Grenfell had not given
her a try-out. The consensus of opinion among the wise old
Newfoundland seamen who gathered on the wharf as she sailed was that
Doctor Grenfell and his crew were much like the three wise men of
Gotham who went to sea in a bowl. Still, not a man of them but would
have ventured forth upon the high seas in an ancient rotten old hull
of a schooner. They were acquainted with schooners and the coast,
while the little launch _Princess May_ was a new species of craft to
them, and was manned by green hands.

"'Tis a dangerous voyage for green hands to be makin'," said one, "and
that small boat were never meant for the sea."

"Aye, for green hands," said another. "They'll never make un without
mishap."

"If they does, 'twill be by the mercy o' God."

"And how'll they make harbor, not knowin' what to sail by?"

"That bit of a craft would never stand half a gale, and if she meets
th' ice she'll crumple up like an eggshell."

"And they'll be havin' some nasty weather, _I_ says. We'll never hear
o' _she_ again or any o' them on board."

"Unless by the mercy o' God."

Such were the remarks of those ashore as the _Princess May_ steamed
down the harbor and out through the narrow channel between the
beetling cliffs, into the broad Atlantic. Dr. Grenfell has confessed
that he was not wholly without misgivings himself, and they seemed
well founded when, at the end of the first five miles, the engineer
reported:

"She's sprung a leak, sir!" and anxiously asked, "Had we better put
back?"

"No! We'll stand on!" answered Grenfell. "Those croakers ashore would
never let us hear the end of it if we turned back. We'll see what's
happened."

An examination discovered a small opening in the bottom. A wooden plug
was shaped and driven into the hole. To Doctor Grenfell's satisfaction
and relief, this was found to heal the leak effectually, and the
_Princess May_ continued on her course.

But this was not to end the difficulties. In those waters dense fogs
settled suddenly and without warning, and now such a fog fell upon
them to shut out all view of land and the surrounding sea.

Nevertheless, the _Princess May_ steamed bravely ahead. To avoid
danger Grenfell was holding her, as he believed, well out to sea, when
suddenly there rose out of the fog a perpendicular towering cliff.
They were almost in the white surf of the waves pounding upon the
rocky base of the cliff before they were aware of their perilous
position.

Every one expected that the little vessel would be driven upon the
rocks and lost, and they realized if that were to happen only a
miracle could save them. Grenfell shouted to the engineer, the engine
was reversed and by skillful maneuvering the _Princess May_
succeeded, by the narrowest margin, in escaping unharmed. To their own
steady nerves, and the intervention of Providence the fearless mariner
and his little crew undoubtedly owed their lives.

Grenfell suspected that the compass was not registering correctly.
Standing out to sea until they were at a safe distance from the
treacherous shore rocks, a careful examination was made. The binnacle
had been left in St. Johns for necessary repairs, and the examination
discovered that iron screws had been used to make the compass box fast
to the cabin. These screws were responsible for a serious deviation of
the needle, and this it was that had so nearly led them to fatal
disaster.

A heavy swell was running, and the little vessel, with but eight feet
beam, rolled so rapidly that the compass needle, even when the defect
had been remedied, made a wide swing from side to side as the vessel
rolled. The best that could be done was to read the dial midway
between the extreme points of the needle's swing. This was deemed safe
enough, and away the _Princess May_ ploughed again through the fog.

At five o'clock in the afternoon it was decided to work in toward
shore and search for a sheltering harbor in which to anchor for the
night. Under any circumstance it would be foolhardy for so small a
vessel to remain in the open sea outside, after darkness set in, in
those ice-menaced fog-choked northern waters. The course of the
_Princess May_ was accordingly changed to bear to the westward and
Grenfell was continuously feeling his way through the fog when
suddenly, and to the dismay of all on board, they found themselves
surrounded by jagged reefs and small rocky islands and in the midst of
boiling surf.

Now they were indeed in grave peril. They must needs maintain
sufficient headway to keep the vessel under her helm. Black rocks
capped with foam rose on every side, they did not know the depth of
the water, and the fog was so thick they could scarce see two boat
lengths from her bow.




VIII

AN ADVENTUROUS VOYAGE


The finest school of courage in the world is the open. The Sands of
Dee, the estuary and the hills of Wales made a fine school of this
sort for Grenfell.

The out-of-doors clears the brain, and there a man learns to think
straight and to the point. When he is on intimate terms with the woods
and mountains, and can laugh at howling gales and the wind beating in
his face, and can take care of himself and be happy without the
effeminating comforts of steam heat and luxurious beds, a man will
prove himself no coward when he comes some day face to face with grave
danger. He has been trained in a school of courage. He has learned to
depend upon himself.

Fine, active games of competition like baseball, football, basketball
and boxing, give nerve, self-confidence and poise. Through them the
hand learns instinctively, and without a moment's hesitation, to do
the thing the brain tells it to do.

Down on The Labrador they say that Grenfell has always been "lucky" in
getting out of tight places and bad corners. But we all know, 'way
down in our hearts, that there is no such thing as "luck." "God helps
them that help themselves." That's the secret of Grenfell's getting
out of such tight corners as this one that he had now run into in the
fog. He was trained in the school of courage. He helped himself, and
he knew how. He was unafraid.

So it was now as always afterward. Grim danger was threatening the
_Princess May_ on every side. Each moment Grenfell and his companions
expected to feel the shock of collision and hear the fatal crunching
and splintering of the vessel's timbers upon the rocks. All of
Grenfell's experiences on the Sands of Dee and in the hills of Wales
and out on the estuary came to his rescue. He did not lose his head
for a moment. That would have been fatal. He had acquired courage and
resourcefulness in that out-of-door school he had attended when a boy.
The situation called for all the grit and good judgment he and his
crew possessed.

Under just enough steam to give the vessel steerageway, they wound in
and out between protruding rocks and miniature islands amidst the
white foam of breakers that pounded upon the rocks all around them. At
length they were headed about. Then cautiously they threaded their way
into the open sea and safety.

This was to be but an incident in the years of labor that lay before
Grenfell on The Labrador. He was to have no end of exciting
experiences, some of them so thrilling that this one was, in
comparison, to fade into insignificance. Labrador is a land of
adventures. The man who casts his lot in that bleak country cannot
escape them. Adventure lurks in every cove and harbor, on every turn
of the trail, ready to spring out upon you and try your mettle, and
learn the sort of stuff you are made of.

Later in the evening they again felt their way landward through the
fog. To their delight they presently found themselves in a harbor, and
that night they rested in a safe and snug anchorage sheltered from
wind and pounding sea.

There was adventure enough on that voyage to satisfy anybody. The sun
did not set that the voyagers had not experienced at least one good
thrill during the daylight hours. On the seventh day from St. Johns
the _Princess May_ crossed the Straits of Belle Isle, and drew
alongside the _Albert_ at Battle Harbor.

The new hospital was nearly ready to receive patients, the first of
the hospitals to be built as a result of the visit to the _Albert_ the
previous summer of the ragged man in the rickety boat. The other
hospital was in course of building at Indian Harbor, and Doctor
Grenfell dispatched the _Albert_, with Doctor Curwin and Miss Williams
to assist in preparing it for patients, while Doctor Bobart and Miss
Cawardine remained in charge of the Battle Harbor hospital.

Away Doctor Grenfell steamed again in the _Princess May_ nothing
daunted by his many difficulties with the little craft in his voyage
from St. John's. It was necessary that he know the headlands and the
harbors, the dangerous places and the safe ones along the whole coast.
The only way to do this was by visiting them, and the quickest and
best way to learn them was by finding them out for himself while
navigating his own craft. Now, light houses stand on two or three of
the most dangerous points of the coast, but in those days there were
none, and there were no correct charts. The mariner had to carry
everything in his head, and indeed he must still do so. He must know
the eight hundred miles of coast as we know the nooks and corners of
our dooryards.

Doctor Grenfell wished also to make the acquaintance of the people. He
wished to visit them in their homes that he might learn their needs
and troubles and so know better how to help them. He was not alone to
be their doctor. He was to clothe and feed the poor so far as he could
and to put them in a way to help themselves.

To do this it was necessary that he know them as a man knows his near
neighbors. He must needs know them as the family doctor knows his
patients. He was no preacher, but, to some degree, he was to be their
pastor and look after their moral as well as their physical welfare.
In short, he was to be their friend, and if he were to do his best for
them, they would have to look upon him as a friend and not only call
upon him when they were in need, but lend him any assistance they
could. To this end they would have to be taught to accept him as one
of themselves, come to live among them, and not as an occasional
visitor or a foreigner.

With the exception of a few small settlements of a half-dozen houses
or so in each settlement, the cabins on the Labrador coast are ten or
fifteen and often twenty or more miles apart. If all of them were
brought together there would scarcely be enough to make one fair-sized
village.

All of the people, as we have seen, live on the seacoast, and not
inland. Only wandering Indians live in the interior. Though Labrador
is nearly as large as Alaska, there is no permanent dwelling in the
whole interior. It is a vast, trackless, uninhabited wilderness of
stunted forests and wide, naked barrens.

The Liveyeres, as the natives, other than Indians and Eskimos, are
called, have no other occupation than trapping and hunting in winter,
and fishing in summer. Their winter cabins are at the heads of deep
bays, in the edge of the forest. In the summer they move to their
fishing places farther down the bays or on scattered, barren islands,
where they live in rude huts or, sometimes, in tents. They catch cod
chiefly, but also, at the mouths of rivers, salmon and trout. All the
fish are salted, and, like the furs caught in winter, bartered to
traders for tea and flour and pork and other necessities of life.

To make the acquaintance of these scattered people, along hundreds of
miles of coast, was a big undertaking. And then, too, there were the
settlements in the north of Newfoundland, among whose people he was to
work. Doctor Grenfell, and his assistants were the only doctors that
any of them could call upon.

And there were the fishermen of the fleet. The twenty-five thousand or
more men, women and children attached to the Newfoundland summer
fisheries on The Labrador formed a temporary summer population.

He could not hope, of course, in the two or three months they were
there, to get on intimate terms with all of them, but he was to meet
as many as he could, and renew and increase both his acquaintances and
his service of the year before. With the _Princess May_ to visit the
sick folk ashore, and the hospital ship _Albert_, which was to serve,
in a manner, as a sea ambulance to take serious cases to the new
hospitals at Indian Harbor and Battle Harbor, Doctor Grenfell felt
that he had made a good start.

As already suggested, this was an adventurous voyage. Twice that
summer the _Princess May_ went aground on the rocks, and once the
_Albert_ was fastened on a reef. Both vessels lost sections of their
keels, but otherwise, due to good seamanship, escaped with minor
injuries.

At every place the Doctor visited he made a record of the people.
After the names of the poorer and destitute ones was listed the things
of which they were most in need.

In one poor little cabin the mother of a large family had, though ill,
kept to her duties in and out of the house until she could stand on
her feet no longer, and when Doctor Grenfell entered the cabin he
found her lying helpless on a rough couch of boards, with scarce
enough bed clothing to cover her. Some half-clad children shivered
behind a miserable broken stove, which radiated little heat but sent
forth much smoke. The haggard and worn out father was walking up and
down the chill room with a wee mite of a baby in his arms, while it
cried pitifully for food. Like all the family the poor little thing
was starving.

The mother was suffering with an acute attack of bronchitis and
pleurisy. All were suffering from lack of food and clothing. The
children were barefooted. One little fellow had no other covering than
an old trouser leg drawn over his frail little body. The man's fur
hunt had failed the previous winter. Sickness prevented fishing. There
was nothing in the house to eat and the family were helpless. Doctor
Grenfell came to them none too soon.

In every harbor and bay and cove there was enough for Doctor Grenfell
to do. His heart and hands were full that summer as they have ever
been since. His skill was constantly in demand. Here was some one
desperately ill, there a finger or an arm to be amputated, or a more
serious operation to be performed.

The hospitals were soon filled to overflowing. Doctor Grenfell afloat,
and his two assistants with the nurses in the hospitals were busy
night and day. The best of it all was many lives were saved. Some who
would have been helpless invalids as long as they lived were sent home
from the hospitals strong and well and hearty. An instance of this was
a girl of fourteen, who had suffered for three years with internal
absesses that would eventually have killed her. She was taken to the
Battle Harbor Hospital, operated upon, and was soon perfectly well. To
this day she is living, a robust contented woman, the mother of a
family, and, perchance, a grandmother.

Grenfell was happy. Here was something better than jogging over
English highways behind a horse and visiting well-to-do grumbling
patients. He was out on the sea he loved, meeting adventure in fog and
storm and gale. That was better than a gig on a country road. He was
helping people to be happy. He prized that far more than the wealth he
might have accumulated, or the reputation he might have gained at
home, as a famous physician or surgeon. There is no happiness in the
world to compare with the happiness that comes with the knowledge
that one is making others happy and helping them to better living and
contentment.

Without knowing it, Grenfell was building a world-fame. If he had
known it, he would not have cared a straw. He was working not for fame
but for results--for the good he could do others. Nothing else has
ever influenced him. Every day he was doing endless good turns without
pay or the thought of pay. In this he was serving not only God but his
country. And he never neglected his athletics, for it was necessary
that he keep his body in the finest physical condition that his brain
might always be keen and alert. Grenfell could not have remained a
year in the field if he had neglected his body, and he was still an
athlete in the pink of condition.




IX

IN THE DEEP WILDERNESS


Imagine, if you will, a vast primeval wilderness spreading away before
you for hundreds of miles, uninhabited, grim and solitary. None but
wild beasts and the roving Indians that hunt them live there. None but
they know the mysteries that lie hidden and guarded by those trackless
miles of forests and barren reaches of unexplored country.

And so this wilderness has lain since creation, unmarred by the hand
of civilized man, clean and unsullied, as God made it. The air, laden
with the perfume of spruce and balsam, is pure and wholesome. The
water carries no germs from the refuse of man, and one may drink it
freely, from river and brook and lake, without fear of contamination.
There is no sound to break the silence of ages save the song of river
rapids, the thunder of mighty falls, or the whisper or moan of wind in
the tree tops; or, perchance, the distant cry of a wolf, the weird
laugh of a loon or the honk of the wild goose.

There are no roads or beaten trails other than the trails of the
caribou, the wild deer that make this their home. The nearest railroad
is half a thousand miles away. Automobiles are unknown and would be
quite useless here. Great rivers and innumerable emerald lakes render
the land impassable for horses. The traveler must make his own trails,
and he must depend in summer upon his canoe or boat, and in winter
upon his snowshoes and his sledge, hauled by great wolf dogs.

With his gun and traps and fishing gear he must glean his living from
the wilderness or from the sea. If he would have a shelter he must
fell trees with his axe and build it with his own skill. He has little
that his own hands and brain do not provide. He must be resourceful
and self-reliant.

I venture to say there is not a boy living--a real red-blooded boy or
red-blooded man either for that matter--who has not dreamed of the day
when he might experience the thrill of venturing into such a
wilderness as we have described. This was America as the discoverers
found it, and as it was before the great explorers and adventurers
opened it to civilization. This was Labrador as Grenfell found
Labrador, and as it is to-day--the great "silent peninsula of the
North." It occupies a large corner of the North American continent,
and much of it is still unexplored, a vast, grim, lonely land, but one
of majestic grandeur and beauty.

[Illustration: "THE DOCTOR ON A WINTER'S JOURNEY"]

The hardy pioneers and settlers of Labrador, as we have seen, have
made their homes only on the seacoast, leaving the interior to
wandering Indian hunters. They do, to be sure, enter the wilderness
for short distances in winter when they are following their business
as hunters, but none has ever made his home beyond the sound of the
sea.

In the forests of the south and southeast are the Mountaineer Indians,
as they are called by all English speaking people; or, if we wish to
put on airs and assume French we may call them the _Montaignais_
Indians. In the North are the Nascaupees, today the most primitive
Indians on the North American continent. In the west and southwest are
the Crees.

All of these Indians are of the great Algonquin family, and are much
like those that Natty Bumpo chummed with or fought against, and those
who lived in New York and New England when the settlers first came to
what are now our eastern states. Labrador is so large, and there are
so few Indians to occupy it, however, that the explorer may wander
through it for months, as I have done, without ever once seeing the
smoke rising from an Indian tepee or hearing a human voice.

The Eskimos of the north coast are much like the Eskimos of Greenland,
both in language and in the way they live. Their summer shelters are
skin tents, which they call _tupeks_. In winter they build dome-shaped
houses from blocks of snow, though they sometimes have cave-like
shelters of stone and earth built against the side of a hill. The snow
houses they call _iglooweuks_, or houses of snow; the stone and earth
shelters are _igloosoaks_, or big igloos, the word igloo, in the
Eskimo language, meaning house. When winter comes big snow drifts soon
cover the igloosoaks, and the snow keeps out the wind and cold. As a
further protection, snow tunnels, through which the people crawl on
hands and knees, are built out from the entrance to the igloosoak, and
these keep all drafts, when a gale blows, from those within.

The Eskimos heat their snow igloos, and in treeless regions their
igloosoaks also, with lamps of hollowed stone. These lamps are made in
the form of a half moon. Seal oil is used as fuel, and a rag, if there
is any to be had, or moss, resting upon the straight side of the lamp,
does service as the wick.

Of course the snow igloos must never be permitted to get so warm that
the snow will melt. The temperature in a snow house is therefore kept
at about thirty degrees, or a little lower. Nevertheless it is
comfortable enough, when the temperature outside is perhaps forty or
fifty degrees below zero and quite likely a stiff breeze blowing.
Comfort is always a matter of comparison. I have spent a good many
nights in snow houses, and was always glad to enjoy the comfort they
offered. To the traveler who has been in the open all day, the snow
house is a cozy retreat and a snug enough place to rest and sleep in.

On the east coast the Eskimos are more civilized and live much like
the liveyeres. All Eskimos are kind hearted, hospitable people. Once,
I remember, when an Eskimo host noticed that the bottom of my sealskin
mocasins had worn through to the stocking, he pulled those he wore off
his feet, and insisted upon me wearing them. He had others, to be
sure, but they were not so good as those he gave me. No matter how
poorly off he is, an Eskimo will feel quite offended if a visitor does
not share with him what he has to eat.

Though Dr. Grenfell's hospitals are farther south, on the coast where
the liveyeres have their cabins, he cruises northward to the Eskimo
country of the east coast every summer, and in the summer has nursing
stations there. Sometimes, when there is a case demanding it, he
brings the sick Eskimos to one of the hospitals. But, generally, the
east coast Eskimos are looked after by the Moravian Brethren in their
missions, and in summer Dr. Grenfell calls at the missions to give
them his medical and surgical assistance.

As stated before, the liveyeres and others than the Indians, build
their cabins on the coast, usually on the shores of bays, but always
by the salt water and where they can hear the sound of the sea. Every
man of them is a hunter or a fisherman or both, and the boys grow up
with guns in their hands, and pulling at an oar or sailing a boat.
They begin as soon as they can walk to learn the ways of the
wilderness and of the wild things that live in it, and they are good
sailors and know a great deal about the sea and the fish while they
are still wee lads. That is to be their profession, and they are
preparing for it.

The Labrador home of the liveyere usually contains two rooms, but
occasionally three, though there are many, especially north of
Hamilton Inlet, of but a single room. All have an enclosed lean-to
porch at the entrance. This serves not only as a protection from
drifting snow in winter, but as a place where stovewood is piled, dog
harness and snowshoes are hung, and various articles stored.

In the cabin is a large wood-burning stove, the first and most
important piece of furniture. There is a home-made table and sometimes
a home-made chair or two, though usually chests in which clothing and
furs are stored are utilized also as seats. A closet built at one side
holds the meager supply of dishes. On a mantelshelf the clock ticks,
if the cabin boasts one, and by its side rests a well-thumbed Bible.

Bunks, built against the rear of the room, serve as beds. If there is
a second room, it supplies additional sleeping quarters, with bunks
built against the walls as in the living room. Travelers and visitors
carry their own sleeping bags and bedding with them and sleep upon the
floor. This is the sort of bed Dr. Grenfell enjoys when sleeping at
night in a liveyere's home.

On the beams overhead are rifles and shotguns, always within easy
reach, for a shot at some game may offer at any time. The side walls
of the cabins are papered with old newspapers, or illustrations cut
from old magazines.

The more thrifty and cleanly scrub floors, tables, doors and all
woodwork with soap and sand once a week, until everything is
spotlessly clean. But along the coast one comes upon cabins often
enough that appear never to have had a cleaning day, and in which the
odor of seal oil and fish is heavy.

Those of the Newfoundland fishermen that bring their families to the
coast live in all sorts of cabins. Some are well built and
comfortable, while others are merely sod-covered huts with earthen
floor. These are occupied, however, only during the fishing season.
The fishermen move into them early in July and begin to leave them
early in September.

As stated elsewhere, no farming can be done in Labrador, and the only
way men can make a living is by hunting and fishing. Eskimos seldom
venture far inland on their hunting and trapping expeditions, but some
of the liveyeres go fifty or sixty miles from the coast to set their
traps, and some of those in Hamilton Inlet go up the Grand River for a
distance of more than two hundred and fifty miles, and others go up
the Nascaupee River for upwards of a hundred miles.

Trapping is all done in winter and it is a lonely and adventurous
calling. Early in September, the men who go the greatest distance
inland set out for their trapping grounds. Usually two men go
together. They build a small log hut called a "tilt," about eight by
ten feet in size. Against each of two sides a bunk is made of saplings
and covered with spruce or balsam boughs. On the boughs the sleeping
bags are spread, and the result is a comfortable bed. The bunks also
serve as seats. A little sheet iron stove that weighs, including
stovepipe, about eighteen pounds and is easy to transport, heats the
tilt, and answers very well for the trapper's simple cooking. The
stovepipe, protruding through the roof, serves as a chimney.

The main tilt is used as a base of supplies, and here reserve
provisions are stored together with accumulations of furs as they are
caught. Fat salt pork, flour, baking powder or soda, salt, tea and
Barbadoes molasses complete the list of provisions carried into the
wilderness from the trading post. Other provisions must be hunted.

Each man provides himself with a frying pan, a tin cup, a spoon or
two, a tin pail to serve as a tea kettle and sometimes a slightly
larger pail for cooking. On his belt he carries a sheath knife, which
he uses for cooking, skinning, eating and general utility. He rarely
encumbers himself with a fork.

For use on the trail each man has a stove similar to the one that
heats the tilt, a small cotton tent, and a toboggan.

From the base tilt the trapping paths or trails lead out. Each trapper
has a path which he has established and which he works alone. He
hauls his sleeping bag, provisions and other equipment on his
toboggan or, as he calls it, "flat sled." He carries his rifle in his
hand and his ax is stowed on the toboggan, for he never knows when a
quick shot will get him a pelt or a day's food.

Sometimes tilts are built along the path at the end of a day's
journey, but if there is no tilt the cotton tent is pitched. In likely
places traps are set for marten, mink or fox. Ice prevents trapping
for the otter in winter, but they are often shot.

At the end of a week or fortnight the partners meet at the base tilt.
Otherwise each man is alone, and we may imagine how glad they are to
see each other when the meeting time comes. But they cannot be idle.
Out through the snow-covered forest, along the shores of frozen lakes
and on wide bleak marshes the trapper has one hundred traps at least,
and some of them as many as three hundred. The men must keep busy to
look after them properly, and so, after a Sunday's rest together they
again separate and are away on their snowshoes hauling their toboggans
after them.

At Christmas time they go back to their homes, down by the sea, to see
their wives and children and to make merry for a week. What a meeting
that always is! How eagerly the little ones have been looking forward
to the day when Daddy would come! O, that blessed Christmas week! But
it is only seven days long, and on the second day of January the
trappers are away again to their tilts and trails and traps. Again
early in March they visit their homes for another week, and then again
return to the deep wilderness to remain there until June.

Sometimes the father never comes back, and then the wilderness carries
in its heart the secret of his end. Then, oh, those hours of happy
expectancy that become days of grave anxiety and finally weeks of
black despair! Such a case happened once when I was in Labrador. Later
they found the young trapper's body where the man had perished,
seventy miles from his home.

As I have said, the life of the trapper is filled with adventure. Many
a narrow escape he has, but he never loses his grit. He cannot afford
to. Gilbert Blake was one of four trappers that rescued me several
years ago, when I had been on short rations in the wilderness for
several weeks, and without food for two weeks. I had eaten my
moccasins, my feet were frozen and I was so weak I could not walk.
Gilbert and I have been friends since then and we later traveled the
wilderness together. Gilbert has no trapping partner. His "path" is a
hundred miles inland from his home. All winter, with no other
companion than a little dog, he works alone in that lonely wilderness.

One winter game was scarce, and Gilbert's provisions were practically
exhausted when he set out to strike up his traps preparatory to his
visit home in March. He was several miles from his tilt when suddenly
one of his snowshoes broke beyond repair. He could not move a step
without snowshoes, for the snow lay ten feet deep. He had no skin with
him with which to net another snowshoe, even if he were to make the
frame; and he had nothing to eat.

A Labrador blizzard came on, and Gilbert for three days was held
prisoner in his tent. He spent his time trying to make a serviceable
snowshoe with netting woven from parts of his clothing torn into
strips. When at last the storm ended and he struck his tent he was
famished.

Packing his things on his toboggan he set out for the tilt, but had
gone only a short distance when the improvised snowshoe broke. He made
repeated efforts to mend it, but always it broke after a few steps
forward. He was in a desperate situation.

He had now been nearly three days without eating. He was still several
miles from the tilt where he had a scant supply that had been reserved
for his journey home. To proceed to the tilt was obviously impossible,
and he could only perish by remaining where he was.

Utterly exhausted after a fruitless effort to flounder forward, he sat
down upon his flatsled, and looked out over the silent snow waste.
Weakened with hunger, it seemed to him that he had reached the end of
his endurance. So far as he knew there was not another human being
within a hundred miles of where he sat, and he had no expectation or
slightest hope of any one coming to his assistance. "I was scrammed,"
said he, which meant, in our vernacular, he was "all in."

Gilbert is a fine Christian man, and all the time, as he told me in
relating his experience, he had been praying God to show him a way to
safety. He never was a coward, and he was not afraid to die, for he
had faced death many times before and men of the wilderness become
accustomed to the thought that sometime, out there in the silence and
alone, the hand of the grim messenger may grasp them. But he was
afraid for Mrs. Blake and the four little ones at home. Were he to
perish there would be no one to earn a living for them. He was
frightened to think of the privations those he loved would suffer.

Suddenly, in the distance, he glimpsed two objects moving over the
snow. As they came nearer he discovered that they were men. He shouted
and waved his arms, and there was an answering signal. Presently two
Mountaineer Indians approached, hauling loaded toboggans, laughing and
shouting a greeting as they recognized him.

"'Twas an answer to my prayers," said Gilbert in relating the incident
to me. "I was fair scrammed when I saw them Indians. They were the
first Indians I had seen the whole winter. They weren't pretty, but
just then they looked to me like angels from heaven, and just as
pretty as any angels could look."

The Indians had recently made a killing, and their toboggans were
loaded with fresh caribou meat. They made Gilbert eat until they
nearly killed him with kindness, and they had an extra pair of
snowshoes, which they gave him.

This is the life of the trapper on The Labrador. This is the sort of
man he is--hardy, patient, brave and reverent. He is a man of grit and
daring, as he must be to cheerfully meet, with a stout heart and a
smile, the constant hardships and adventures that beset him.

Dr. Grenfell declares that it is no hardship to devote his life to
helping men like this. His work among them brings constant joy to him.
They appreciate him, and he has grown to look upon them as all members
of his big family. He takes a personal and devoted interest in each.
It is a great comfort to the men to know that if any are sick or
injured at home while they are away on the trails the mission doctor
will do his best to heal them. Before Grenfell went to The Labrador
there was no doctor to call upon the whole winter through.

The trapping season for fur ends in April. Then the trapper "strikes
up" his traps, hangs them in trees where he will find them the
following fall, packs his belongings on his toboggan and returns home,
unless he is to remain to hunt bear. In that case he must wait for the
bears to come forth from their winter's sleep, and this will keep the
hunter in the wilderness until after the "break-up" comes and the ice
goes out. Those who go far inland usually wait in any case until the
ice is out of the streams and boat or canoe traveling is possible and
safe.

The break-up sets in, usually, early in June. Then come torrential
rains. The snow-covered wilderness is transformed into a sea of slush.
New brooks rise everywhere and pour down with rush and roar into lakes
and rivers. The rivers over-flow their banks. Trees are uprooted and
are swept forward on the flood. Broken ice jams and pounds its way
through the rapids with sound like thunder. The spring break-up is an
inspiring and wonderful spectacle.

When the hunting season ends and the trappers return from their winter
trails, they enjoy a respite at home mending fishing nets, repairing
boats and making things tidy and ship-shape for the summer's fishing.
Everyone is now looking forward with keen anticipation to the first
run of fish. From the time the ice goes out all one hears along the
coast is talk of fish. "Any signs of fish, b'y?" One hears it
everywhere, for everybody is asking everybody else that question.

In Hamilton Inlet and Sandwich Bay salmon fisheries are of chief
importance. Salmon here are all salted down in barrels and not tinned,
as on the Pacific coast. Once there was a salmon cannery in Sandwich
Bay, but the Hudson's Bay Company bought it and demolished it, as
there was doubtless less work and more profit for the Company in
salted salmon. Elsewhere the fisheries are mainly for cod.

In a frontier land it is not easy to earn a living. Everybody must
work hard all the time. Men, women, boys and girls all do their share
at the fishing. Women and children help to split and cure the fish. It
is a proud day for any lad when he is big enough and strong enough to
pull a stroke with the heavy oar, and go out to sea with his father.

The Labrador, or Arctic, current now and again keeps ice drifting
along the coast the whole summer through. When ice is there fishermen
cannot set their nets and fish traps, for the ice would tear the gear
and ruin it. Neither can they fish successfully with hook and line
when the ice is in. When this happens few fish are caught.

Then, too, there are seasons when game and animals move away from
certain regions, and then the trapper cannot get them. Perhaps they go
farther inland, and too far for him to follow. I have seen times when
ptarmigans were so thick men killed them for dog food, and perhaps the
next year there would not be a ptarmigan to be found to put into the
pot for dinner. I have seen the snow trampled down everywhere in the
woods and among the brush by innumerable snowshoe rabbits, and I have
seen other years when not a single rabbit track was to be found
anywhere. It is the same with caribou and the fur bearing animals as
well. In those years when game is scarce the people are hard put to it
to get a bit of fresh meat to eat.

When no fresh meat is to be had salt fish, bread (rarely with butter)
and tea, with molasses as sweetening, is the diet. There is no milk,
even for the babies. If all the salt fish has been sold or traded in
for flour and tea, bread and tea three times a day is all there is to
eat.

People cannot keep well on just bread and tea, or even bread and salt
fish and tea. It is not hard for us to imagine how we would feel if
every meal we had day in and day out was only bread and tea, and
sometimes not enough of that.




X

THE SEAL HUNTER


No less perilous is the business of fisherman and sealer than that of
hunter and trapper. Every turn a man makes down on The Labrador is
likely to carry him into some adventure that will place his life in
danger, at sea as on land. But there is no way out of it if a living
is to be made.

It is a strange fact that one never recognizes a great deal of danger
in the life that one is accustomed to living, no matter how perilous
it may seem to others. If a Labradorman were to come to any of our
towns or cities his heart would be in his mouth at every turn, for a
time at least, dodging automobiles and street cars. It would appear to
him an exceedingly hazardous existence that we live, and he would long
to be back to the peace and quiet and safety of his sea and
wilderness. And our streets would be dangerous ground to him, indeed,
until he became accustomed to dodging motor cars. He is nimble enough,
and on his own ground could put most of us to shame in that respect,
but here he is lacking in experience.

The same hunter will face the storms and solitude of the wilderness
trail without ever once feeling that he is in danger or afraid. He
knows how to do it. That is the life that he has been reared to live.
The average city man would perish in a day if left alone to care for
himself on a trapper's trail. He has never learned the business, and
he would not know how to take care of himself.

The Labradorman being both hunter and fisherman, is perfectly at home
both in the wilderness and on the sea. He has the dangers of both to
meet, but he does not recognize them as dangerous callings, though
every year some mate or neighbor loses his life. "'Tis the way o' th'
Lard."

Ice still covers the Labrador harbors in May, and this is when the
seal hunt begins, or, as the liveyere says, he goes "swileing." He
calls a seal a "swile." With a harpoon attached to a long line he
stations himself at a breathing hole in the ice which the seals under
the ice have kept open, and out of which, now and again, one raises
its nose and fills its lungs with air, for seals are animals, not
fish, and must have air to breathe or they will drown. The hole is a
small one, but large enough to cast the spear, or harpoon, into.

Seals are exceedingly shy animals, and the slightest movement will
frighten them away. Therefore the seal hunter must stand perfectly
still, like a graven image, with harpoon poised, and that is pretty
cold work in zero weather. If luck is with him he will after a time
see a small movement in the water, and a moment later a seal's nose
will appear. Then like a flash of lightning, he casts the harpoon, and
if his aim is good, as it usually is, a seal is fast on the barbs of
the harpoon.

The harpoon point is attached to a long line, while the harpoon shaft,
by an ingenious arrangement, will slip free from the point. Now, while
the shaft remains in the hands of the hunter, the line begins running
rapidly down through the hole, for the seal in a vain endeavor to free
itself dives deeply. The other end of the line also remaining in the
hands of the hunter is fastened to the shaft of the harpoon, and there
is a struggle. In time, the seal, unable to return to its hole for
air, is drowned, and then is hauled out through the hole upon the ice.

These north Atlantic seals, having no fine fur like the Pacific seals,
are chiefly valuable for their fat. The pelts are, however, of
considerable value to the natives. The women tan them and make them
into watertight boots or other clothing. Of course a good many of them
find their way to civilization, where they are made into pocketbooks
and bags, and they make a very fine tough leather indeed. The flesh is
utilized for dog food, though, as in the case of young seals
particularly, it is often eaten by the people, particularly when other
sorts of meat is scarce. Most of the people, and particularly the
Eskimos, are fond of the flippers and liver.

Sometimes the seals come out of their holes to lie on the ice and
bask in the sun. Then the hunter, simulating the movements of a seal,
crawls toward his game until he is within rifle shot.

Should a gale of wind arise suddenly, the ice may be separated into
pans and drift abroad before the seal hunters can make their escape to
land. In that case a hunter may be driven to sea on an ice pan, and he
is fortunate if his neighbors discover him and rescue him in boats.

After the ice goes out, those who own seal nets set them, and a great
many seals are caught in this way. At this season the seals frequently
are seen sunning themselves on the shore rocks, and the hunters stalk
and shoot them.

Newfoundlanders carry on their sealing in steamers built for the
purpose. They go out to the great ice floe, far out to sea and quite
too far for the liveyeres to reach in small craft. Here the seals are
found in thousands. These vessels, depending upon the size, bring home
a cargo sometimes numbering as many as 20,000 to 30,000 seals in a
single ship, and there are about twenty-five ships in the fleet.

This terrible slaughter has seriously decreased the numbers. The
Labrador Eskimos used to depend upon them largely for their living.
They can do this no longer, for not every season, as formerly, are
there enough seals to supply needs. All of the five varieties of North
Atlantic seals are caught on the coast--harbor, jar, harp, hooded and
square flipper. The last named is also called the great bearded seal
and sometimes the sealion. The first named is the smallest of all.

Scarce a year passes that we do not hear of a serious disaster in the
Newfoundland sealing fleet. Sometimes severe snow storms arise when
the men are hunting on the floe, and then the men are often lost.
Sometimes the ships are crushed in the big floe and go to the bottom.
The latest of these disasters was the disappearance of the _Southern
Cross_, with a crew of one hundred seventy-five men.

One of my good friends, Captain Jacob Kean, used to command the
_Virginia Lake_, one of the largest of the sealers. She carried a crew
of about two hundred men. A few years before Captain Kean lost his
life in one of the awful sea disasters of the coast, he related to me
one of his experiences at the sealing.

Captain Kean was in luck that year, and found the seals early and in
great numbers. The crew had made a good hunt on the floe, and they are
loading them with about a third of a cargo aboard when suddenly the
ice closed in and the _Virginia Lake_ was "pinched," with the result
that a good sized hole was broken in her planking on the port side
forward below the water line. The sea rushed in, and it looked for a
time as though the vessel would sink, and there were not boats enough
to accommodate the crew even if boats could have been used, which was
hardly possible under the conditions, for the sea was clogged with
heaving ice pans.

The pumps were manned, and Captain Kean, and with every man not
working the pumps, with feverish haste shifted the cargo to the
starboard side and aft. Presently, with the weight shifted, the ship
lay over on her starboard side and her bow rose above the water until
the crushed planking and the hole were above the water line.

The hole now exposed, Captain Kean stuffed it with sea biscuit, or
hardtack. Over this he nailed a covering of canvas. Tubs of butter
were brought up, and the canvas thoroughly and thickly buttered. This
done, a sheathing of planking was spiked on over the buttered canvas.
Then the cargo was re-shifted into place, the vessel settled back upon
an even keel, and it was found that the leak was healed. The sea
biscuit, absorbing moisture, swelled, and this together with the
canvas, butter and planking proved effectual. Captain Kean loaded his
ship with seals and took her into St. John's harbor safely with a full
cargo.

The following year the _Virginia Lake_ was again pinched by the ice,
but this time was lost. Captain Kean and his crew took refuge on the
ice floe, and were fortunately rescued by another sealer. When Captain
Kean lost his life a few years later the sealing fleet lost one of its
most successful masters. He was a fine Christian gentleman and as able
a seaman as ever trod a bridge.

But this is the life of the sealer and the fisherman of the northern
sees. Terrible storms sometimes sweep down that rugged, barren coast
and leave behind them a harvest of wrecked vessels and drowned men and
destitute families that have lost their only support.

These were the conditions that Grenfell found in Labrador, and this
was the breed of men, these hunters and trappers, fishermen and
sealers--sturdy, honest, God-fearing folk--with whom Grenfell took up
his life. He had elected to share with them the hardships of their
desolate land and the perils of their ice-choked sea. They needed him,
and to them he offered a service that was Christ-like in its breadth
and devotion.

It was a peculiar field. No ordinary man could have entered it with
hope of success. Mere ability as a physician and surgeon of wide
experience was not enough. In addition to this, success demanded that
he be a Christian gentleman with high ideals, and freedom from
bigotry. Courage, moral as well as physical, was a necessity. Only a
man who was himself a fearless and capable navigator could make the
rounds of the coast and respond promptly to the hurried and urgent
calls to widely separated patients. Constant exposure to hardship and
peril demanded a strong body and a level head. Balanced judgment, high
executive and administrative ability, deep insight into human
character and unbounded sympathy for those who suffered or were in
trouble were indispensable characteristics. All of these attributes
Grenfell possessed.

A short time before Mr. Moody's death, Grenfell met Moody and told him
of the inspiration he had received from that sermon, delivered in
London many years before by the great evangelist.

"What have you been doing since?" asked Moody.

What has Grenfell been doing since? He has established hospitals at
Battle Harbor, Indian Harbor, Harrington and Northwest River in
Labrador, and at St. Anthony in northeastern Newfoundland. He has
established schools and nursing stations both in Labrador and
Newfoundland. He has built and maintains two orphanages. He founded
the Seamen's Institute in St. Johns.

Year after year, since that summer's day when the _Albert_ anchored in
Domino Run and Grenfell first met the men of the Newfoundland fishing
fleet and the liveyeres of the Labrador coast, winter and summer,
Grenfell himself and the doctors that assist him have patrolled that
long desolate coast giving the best that was in them to the people
that lived there. Grenfell has preached the Word, fed the hungry,
clothed the naked, sheltered the homeless and righted many wrongs. He
has fought disease and poverty, evil and oppression. Hardship, peril
and prejudice have fallen to his lot, but he has met them with a
courage and determination that never faltered, and he is still "up and
at it."

Grenfell's life has been a life of service to others. Freely and
joyfully he has given himself and all that was in him to the work of
making others happier, and the people of the coast love and trust him.
With pathetic confidence they lean upon him and call him in their
need, as children lean upon their father, and he has never failed to
respond. When a man who had lost a leg felt the need for an artificial
one, he appealed to Grenfell:

     Docter plase I whant to see you. Docter sir have you got a
     leg if you have Will you plase send him Down Praps he may
     fet and you would oblig.

One who wished clothing for his family wrote:

     To Dr. Gransfield
     Dear honrabel Sir,
     I would be pleased to ask you Sir if you would be pleased to
     give me and my wife a littel poor close. I was going in the
     Bay to cut some wood. But I am all amost blind and cant Do
     much so if you would spear me some Sir I would Be very
     thankful to you Sir.

Calls to visit the sick are continuously received. The following are
genuine examples:

     Reverance dr. Grandfell. Dear sir we are expecting you hup
     and we would like for you to come so quick as you can for my
     dater is very sick with a very large sore under her left
     harm we emenangin that the old is two enchis deep and two
     enches wide plase com as quick as you can to save life I
     remains yours truely.

     Docker--Please wel you send me somting for the pain in my
     feet and what you proismed to send my little boy. Docker I
     am almost cripple, it is up my hips, I can hardly walk. This
     is my housban is gaining you this note.

     doctor--i have a compleant i ham weak with wind on the
     chest, weakness all over me up in my harm.

     Dear Dr. Grenfell.
     I would like for you to Have time to come Down to my House
     Before you leaves to go to St. Anthony. My little Girl is
     very Bad. it seems all in Her neck. Cant Ply her Neck
     forward if do she nearly goes in the fits. i dont know what
     it is the matter with Her myself. But if you would see Her
     you would know what the matter with Her. Please send a word
     by the Bearer what gives you this note and let me know where
     you will have time to come down to my House, i lives down
     the Bay a Place called Berry Head.

These people are made of the same clay as you and I. They are moved by
the same human emotions. They love those who are near and dear to them
no less than we love those who are near and dear to us. The same
heights or depths of joy and sorrow, hopes and disappointments enter
into their lives. In the following chapters let us meet some of them,
and travel with Doctor Grenfell as he goes about his work among them.




XI

UNCLE WILLIE WOLFREY


One bitterly cold day in winter our dog team halted before a cabin. We
had been hailed as we were passing by the man of the house. He gave us
a hearty hand shake and invitation to have "a drop o' tea and a bit to
eat," adding, "you'd never ha' been passin' without stoppin' for a cup
o' tea to warm you up, whatever." It was early, and we had intended to
stop farther on to boil our kettle in the edge of the woods with as
little loss of time as possible, but there was no getting away from
the hospitality of the liveyere.

There were three of us, and we were as hungry as bears, for there is
nothing like snowshoe traveling in thirty and forty degrees below zero
weather to give one an appetite. As we entered we sniffed a delicious
odor of roasting meat, and that one sniff made us glad we had stopped,
and made us equally certain we had never before in our lives been so
hungry for a good meal. For days we had been subsisting on hardtack
and jerked venison, two articles of food that will not freeze for they
contain no moisture, and tea; or, when we stopped at a cabin, on bread
and tea. The man's wife was already placing plates, cups and saucers
on the bare table for us, and two little boys were helping with hungry
eagerness.

"Hang your adikeys on the pegs there and get warmed up," our host
invited. "Dinner's a'most ready. 'Tis a wonderful frosty day to be
cruisin'."

We did as he directed, and then seated ourselves on chests that he
pulled forward for seats. He had many questions to ask concerning the
folk to the northward, their health and their luck at the winter's
trapping, until, presently, the woman brought forth from the oven and
placed upon the table a pan of deliciously browned, smoking meat.

"Set in! Set in!" beamed our host. "'Tis fine you comes today and not
yesterday," adding as we drew up to the table: "All we'd been havin'
to give you yesterday and all th' winter, were bread and tea. Game's
been wonderful scarce, and this is the first bit o' meat we has th'
whole winter, barrin' a pa'tridge or two in November. But this marnin'
I finds a lynx in one o' my traps, and a fine prime skin he has. I'll
show un to you after we eats, though he's on the dryin' board and you
can't see the fur of he."

We bowed our heads while the host asked the blessing. The Labradorman
rarely omits the blessing, and often the meal is closed with a final
thanks, for men of the wilderness live near to God. He is very near to
them and they reverence Him.

"Help yourself, sir! Help yourself!"

Each of us helped himself sparingly to the cat meat. There was bread,
but no butter, and there was hot tea with black molasses for
sweetening.

"Take more o' th' meat now! Help yourselves! Don't be afraid of un,"
our hospitable host urged, and we did help ourselves again, for it was
good.

Whenever we passed within hailing distance of a cabin, we had to stop
for a "cup o' hot tea, whatever." Otherwise the people would have felt
sorely hurt. We seldom found more elaborate meals than bread, tea and
molasses, rarely butter, and of course never any vegetables.

We soon discovered that we could not pay the head of the family for
our entertainment, but where there were children we left money with
the mother with which to buy something for the little ones, which
doubtless would be clothing or provisions for the family. If there
were no children we left the money on the table or somewhere where it
surely would be discovered after our departure.

I remember one of this fine breed of men well. I met him on this
journey, and he once drove dog team for me--Uncle Willie Wolfrey.
Doctor Grenfell says of him:

"Uncle Willie isn't a scholar, a social light, or a capitalist
magnate, but all the same ten minutes' visit to Uncle Willie Wolfrey
is worth five dollars of any man's investment."

It requires a lot of physical energy for any man to tramp the trails
day after day through a frigid, snow-covered wilderness, and months
of it at a stretch. It is a big job for a young and hearty man, and a
tremendous one for a man of Uncle Willie's years. And it is a man's
job, too, to handle a boat in all weather, in calm and in gale, in
clear and in fog, sixteen to twenty hours a day, and the fisherman's
day is seldom shorter than that. The fish must be caught when they are
there to be caught, and they must be split and salted the day they are
caught, and then there's the work of spreading them on the "flakes,"
and turning them, and piling and covering them when rain threatens.

A cataract began to form on Uncle Willie's eyes, and every day he
could see just a little less plainly than the day before. The
prospects were that he would soon be blind, and without his eyesight
he could neither hunt nor fish.

But with his growing age and misfortune Uncle Willie was never a whit
less cheerful. He had to earn his living and he kept at his work.

"'Tis the way of the Lard," said he. "He's blessed me with fine health
all my life, and kept the house warm, and we've always had a bit to
eat, whatever. The Lard has been wonderful good to us, and I'll never
be complainin'."

It was never Uncle Willie's way to complain about hard luck. He always
did his best, and somehow, no matter how hard a pinch in which he
found himself, it always came out right in the end.

Finally Uncle Willie's eyesight became so poor that it was difficult
for him to see sufficiently to get around, and one day last summer
(1921) he stepped off his fish stage where he was at work, and the
fall broke his thigh. This happened at the very beginning of the
fishing season, and put an end to the summer's fishing for Uncle
Willie, and, of course, to all hope of hunting and trapping during
last winter.

Then Doctor Grenfell happened along with his brave old hospital ship
_Strathcona_. Dr. Grenfell has a way of happening along just when
people are desperately in need of him. With Dr. Grenfell was Dr.
Morlan, a skillful and well-known eye and throat specialist from
Chicago. Dr. Morlan was spending his holiday with Dr. Grenfell,
helping heal the sick down on The Labrador, giving free his services
and his great skill.

Dr. Grenfell set and dressed Uncle Willie Wolfrey's broken thigh. Dr.
Morlan was to remain but a few days. If he were to help Uncle Willie's
eyes there could be no time given for a recovery from the operation on
the thigh. Uncle Willie was game for it.

They had settled Uncle Willie comfortably at Indian Harbor Hospital,
and immediately the thigh was set Dr. Morlan operated upon one of the
eyes. The operation was successful, and when the freeze-up came with
the beginning of winter, Uncle Willie, hobbling about on crutches and
with one good eye was home again in his cabin.

Uncle Willie lives in a lonely place, and for many miles north and
south he has but one neighbor. The outlook for the winter was dismal
indeed. His flour barrel was empty. He had no money.

But that stout old heart could not be discouraged or subdued. Uncle
Willie was as full of grit as ever he was in his life. He was still a
fountain of cheery optimism and hope. He could see with one eye now,
and out of that eye the world looked like a pretty good place in which
to live, and he was decided to make the best of it.

Dr. Grenfell, passing down the coast, called in to see the crippled
old fisherman and hunter, and in commenting on that visit he said:

"There are certain men it always does one good to meet. Uncle Willie
is a channel of blessing. His sincerity and faith do one good. There
is always a merry glint in his eye. Even with one eye out, and his
crutches on, and his prospect of hunger, Uncle Willie was just the
same."

Dr. Grenfell left some money, donated by the Doctor's friends, and
made other provisions for the comfort of Uncle Willie Wolfrey during
the winter. If all goes well he will be at his fishing again, when the
ice clears away; and the snows of another winter will see him again on
his trapping path setting traps for martens and foxes. And with his
rifle and one good eye, who knows but he may knock over a silver fox
or a bear or two?

Good luck to Uncle Willie Wolfrey and his spirit, which cannot be
downed.

As Dr. Grenfell has often said, the Labradorman is a fountain of faith
and hope and inspiration. If the fishing season is a failure he turns
to his winter's trapping with unwavering faith that it will yield him
well. If his trapping fails his hope and faith are none the less when
he sets out in the spring to hunt seals. Seals may be scarce and the
reward poor, but never mind! The summer fishing is at hand, and _this_
year it will certainly bring a good catch! "The Lard be wonderful good
to us, _what_ever."




XII

A DOZEN FOX TRAPS


On that same voyage along the coast when Uncle Willie Wolfrey was
found with a broken thigh, Dr. Grenfell, after he had operated upon
Uncle Willie, in the course of his voyage, stopping at many harbors to
give medical assistance to the needy ones, ran in one day to Kaipokok
Bay, at Turnavik Islands.

As the vessel dropped her anchor he observed a man sitting on the
rocks eagerly watching the ship. The jolly boat was launched, and as
it approached the land the man arose and coming down to the water's
edge, shouted:

"Be that you, Doctor?"

"Yes, Uncle Tom, it is I?" the Doctor shouted back, for he had already
recognized Uncle Tom, one of the fine old men of the coast.

When Grenfell stepped ashore and took Uncle Tom's hand in a hearty
grasp, the old man broke down and cried like a child. Uncle Tom was
evidently in keen distress.

"Oh, Doctor, I'm so glad you comes. I were lookin' for you, Doctor,"
said the old man in a voice broken by emotion. "I were watchin' and
watchin' out here on the rocks, not knowin' whether you'd be comin'
this way, but hopin', and prayin' the Lard to send you. He sends you,
Doctor. 'Twere the Lard sends you when I'm needin' you, sir, sorely
needin' you."

Uncle Tom is seventy years of age. He was born and bred on The
Labrador, but he has not spent all his life there. In his younger days
he shipped as a sailor, and as a seaman saw many parts of the world.
But long ago he returned to his home to settle down as a fisherman and
a trapper.

When the war came, the brave old soul, stirred by patriotism, paid his
own passage and expenses on the mail boat to St. Johns, and offered to
volunteer for service. Of course he was too old and was rejected
because of his age.

Uncle Tom, his patriotism not in the least dampened, returned to his
Labrador home and divided all the fur of his winter's hunt into two
equal piles. To one pile he added a ten dollar bill, and that pile,
with the ten dollars added, he shipped at once to the "Patriotic Fund"
in St. Johns. He had offered himself, and they would not take him, and
this was all he could do to help win the war, and he did it freely and
wistfully, out of his noble, generous patriotic soul.

"What is the trouble, Uncle Tom?" asked Grenfell, when Uncle Tom had
to some extent regained his composure, and the old man told his
story.

He was in hard luck. Late the previous fall (1920) or early in the
winter he had met with a severe accident that had resulted in several
broken ribs. Navigation had closed, and he was cut off from all
surgical assistance, and his broken ribs had never had attention and
had not healed. He could scarcely draw a breath without pain, or even
rest without pain at night, and he could not go to his trapping path.

He depended upon his winter's hunt mainly for support, and with no fur
to sell he was, for the first time in his life, compelled to contract
a debt. Then, suddenly, the trader with whom he dealt discontinued
giving credit. Uncle Tom was stranded high and dry, and when the
fishing season came he had no outfit or means of purchasing one, and
could not go fishing.

Besides his wife there were six children in Uncle Tom's family, though
none of them was his own or related to him. When the "flu" came to the
coast in 1918, and one out of every five of the people around Turnavik
Islands died, several little ones were left homeless and orphans. The
generous hearts of Uncle Tom and his wife opened to them and they took
these six children into their home as their own. And so it happened
that Uncle Tom had, and still has, a large family depending upon him.

"As we neared the cottage," said Doctor Grenfell, "his good wife,
beaming from head to foot as usual, came out to greet us. Optimist to
the last ditch, she _knew_ that somehow provision would be made. She,
too, had had her troubles, for twice she had been operated on at
Indian Harbor for cancer."

Uncle Tom must have suffered severely during all those months that he
had lived with his broken ribs uncared for. Now Dr. Grenfell, without
loss of time, strapped them up good and tight. Mrs. Grenfell supplied
the six youngsters with a fine outfit of good warm clothes, and when
Dr. Grenfell sailed out of Kaipokok Bay Uncle Tom and Mrs. Tom had no
further cause for worry concerning the source from which provisions
would come for themselves and the six orphans they had adopted.

These are but a few incidents in the life of the people to whom Dr.
Grenfell is devoting his skill and his sympathy year in and year out.
I could relate enough of them to fill a dozen volumes like this, but
space is limited.

There is always hardship and always will be in a frontier land like
Labrador, and Labrador north of Cape Charles is the most primitive of
frontier lands. Dr. Grenfell and his helpers find plenty to do in
addition to giving out medicines and dressing wounds. A little boost
sometimes puts a family on its feet, raising it from abject poverty to
independence and self-respect. Just a little momentum to push them
over the line. Grenfell knows how to do this.

Several years ago Dr. Grenfell anchored his vessel in Big Bight, and
went ashore to visit David Long. David had had a hard winter, and
among other kindnesses to the family, Dr. Grenfell presented David's
two oldest boys, lads of fifteen or sixteen or thereabouts, with a
dozen steel fox traps. Lack of traps had prevented the boys taking
part in trapping during the previous winter.

The next year after giving the boys the traps, Grenfell again cast
anchor in Big Bight, and, as usual, rowed ashore to visit the Longs.
There was great excitement in their joyous greeting. Something
important had happened. There was no doubt of that! David and Mrs.
Long and the two lads and all the little Longs were exuding mystery,
but particularly the two lads. Whatever this mysterious secret was
they could scarce keep it until they had led Dr. Grenfell into the
cabin, and he was comfortably seated.

Then, with vast importance and some show of deliberate dignity, David
opened a chest. From its depths he drew forth a pelt. Dr. Grenfell
watched with interest while David shook it to make the fur stand out
to best advantage, and then held up to his admiring gaze the skin of a
beautiful silver fox! The lads had caught it in one of the dozen traps
he had given them.

"We keeps un for you," announced David exultantly.

"It's a prime one, too!" exclaimed the Doctor, duly impressed, as he
examined it.

"She _be_ that," emphasized David proudly. "No finer were caught on
the coast the winter."

"It was a good winter's work," said the Doctor.

"'Twere _that_ now! 'Twere a _wonder_ful good winter's work--just
t'cotch that un!" enthused Mrs. Long.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked Doctor Grenfell.

"We keeps un for you," said David. "The time was th' winter when we
has ne'er a bit o' grub but what we hunts, all of our flour and
molasses gone. But we don't take _he_ to the trade, _what_ever. We
keeps _he_ for you."

Out on a coast island Captain William Bartlett, of Brigus,
Newfoundland, kept a fishing station and a supply store. Captain Will
is a famous Arctic navigator. He is one of the best known and most
successful masters of the great sealing fleet. He is also a cod
fisherman of renown and he is the father of Captain "Bob" Bartlett,
master of explorer Peary's _Roosevelt_, and it was under Captain Will
Bartlett's instruction that Captain "Bob" learned seamanship and
navigation. Captain William Bartlett is as fine a man as ever trod a
deck. He is just and honest to a degree, and he has a big generous
heart.

Doctor Grenfell accepted the silver fox pelt, and as he steamed down
the coast he ran his vessel in at Captain Bartlett's station. He had
confidence in Captain Bartlett.

"Here's a silver fox skin that belongs to David Long's lads," said he,
depositing the pelt on the counter. "I wish you'd take it, and do the
best you can for David, Captain Will. I'll leave it with you."

Captain Bartlett shook the pelt out, and admired its lustrous beauty.

"It's a good one! David's lads were in luck when they caught _that_
fellow. I'll do the best I can with it," he promised.

"They'll take the pay in provisions and other necessaries," suggested
Grenfell.

"All right," agreed Captain Will. "I'll send the goods over to them."

On his way to the southward a month later Doctor Grenfell again cast
anchor at Big Bight. David Long and Mrs. Long, the two big lads, and
all the little Longs, were as beaming and happy as any family could be
in the whole wide world. Captain Bartlett's vessel had run in at Big
Bight one day, and paid for the silver fox pelt in merchandise.

The cabin was literally packed with provisions. The family were well
clothed. There was enough and to spare to keep them in affluence, as
affluence goes down on The Labrador, for a whole year and longer. Need
and poverty were vanished. Captain Will had, indeed, done well with
the silver fox pelt.

These are stories of life on The Labrador as Doctor Grenfell found
it. From the day he reached the coast and every day since his heart
has ached with the troubles and poverty existing among the liveyeres.
He has been thrilled again and again by incidents of heroic struggle
and sacrifice among them. He has done a vast deal to make them more
comfortable and happy, as in the case of David Long. Still, in spite
of it all, there are cases of desperate poverty and suffering there,
and doubtless will always be.

In every city and town and village of our great and prosperous country
people throw away clothing and many things that would help to make the
lives of the Longs and the hundreds of other liveyeres of the coast
who are toiling for bare existence easier to endure. Enough is wasted
every year, indeed, in any one of our cities to make the whole
population of Labrador happy and comfortable. And there's the pity. If
Grenfell could _only_ be given _some_ of this waste to take to them!

From the beginning this thought troubled Doctor Grenfell. And in
winter when the ice shuts the whole coast off from the rest of the
world, he turned his attention to efforts to secure the help of good
people the world over in his work. Making others happy is the greatest
happiness that any one can experience, and Grenfell wished others to
share his happiness with him. Nearly every winter for many years he
has lectured in the United States and Canada and Great Britain with
this in view. The Grenfell Association was organized with
headquarters in New York, where money and donations of clothing and
other necessaries might be sent.[B]

As we shall see, many great things have been accomplished by Doctor
Grenfell and this Association, organized by his friends several years
ago. Every year a great many boxes and barrels of clothing go to him
down on The Labrador, filled with good things for the needy ones. Boys
and girls, as well as men and women, send warm things for winter. Not
only clothing, but now and again toys for the Wee Tots find their way
into the boxes. Just like other children the world over, the Wee Tots
of The Labrador like toys to play with and they are made joyous with
toys discarded by the over-supplied youngsters of our land.

Of course there are foolish people who send useless things too.
Scattered through the boxes are now and again found evening clothes
for men and women, silk top hats, flimsy little women's bonnets,
dancing pumps, and even crepe-de-chene nighties. These serve as
playthings for the grown-ups, many of whom, especially the Indians and
Eskimos, are quite childlike with gimcracks. I recall once seeing an
Eskimo parading around on a warm day in the glory of a full dress coat
and silk hat, the coat drawn on over his ordinary clothing. He was the
envy of his friends.

While Grenfell dispensed medical and surgical treatment, and at the
same time did what he could for the needy, he also turned his
attention to an attack upon the truck system. This system of barter
was responsible for the depths of poverty in which he found the
liveyeres. He was mightily wrought up against it, as well he might
have been, and still is, and he laid plans at once to relieve the
liveyeres and northern Newfoundlanders from its grip.

This was a great undertaking. It was a stroke for freedom, for the
truck system, as we have seen, is simply a species of slavery. He
realized that in attacking it he was to create powerful enemies who
would do their utmost to injure him and interfere with his work. Some
of these men he knew would go to any length to drive him off The
Labrador. It required courage, but Grenfell was never lacking in
courage. He rolled up his sleeves and went at it. He always did things
openly and fearlessly, first satisfying himself he was right.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] The address of the Grenfell Association is 156 Fifth Avenue, New
York.




XIII

SKIPPER TOM'S COD TRAP


Skipper Tom lived, and for aught I know still lives, at Red Bay, a
little settlement on the Straits of Belle Isle, some sixty miles to
the westward of Battle Harbor.

Along the southern coast of Labrador the cabins are much closer
together than on the east coast, and there are some small settlements
in the bays and harbors, with snug little painted cottages.

Red Bay, where Skipper Tom lived, is one of these settlements. It
boasts a neat little Methodist chapel, built by the fishermen and
trappers from lumber cut in the near-by forest, and laboriously sawn
into boards with the pit saw.

Skipper Tom lived in one of the snuggest and coziest of the cottages.
I remember the cottage and I remember Skipper Tom well. I happened
into the settlement one evening directly ahead of a winter blizzard,
and Skipper Tom and his good family opened their little home to me and
sheltered me with a hospitable cordial welcome for three days, until
the weather cleared and the dogs could travel again and I pushed
forward on my journey.

Skipper Tom stood an inch or two above six feet in his moccasins. He
was a broad-shouldered, strong-limbed man of the wilderness and the
sea. His face was kindly and gentle, but at the same time reflected
firmness, strength and thoughtfulness. When he spoke you were sure to
listen, for there was always the conviction that he was about to utter
some word of wisdom, or tell you something of importance. The moment
you looked at him and heard his voice you said to yourself: "Here is a
man upon whom I can rely and in whom I can place absolute confidence."

If Skipper Tom promised to do anything, he did it, unless Providence
intervened. If he said he would not do a thing, he would not do it,
and you could depend on it. He was a man of his word. That was Skipper
Tom--big, straight spoken, and as square as any man that ever lived.
That is what his neighbors said of him, and that is the way Doctor
Grenfell found him.

Now and again the Methodist missionary visited Red Bay in his circuit
of the settlements, and when he came he made his headquarters in the
home of Skipper Tom. On the occasion of these visits he conducted
services in the chapel on Sunday, and on week days visited every home
in Red Bay. Skipper Tom was class leader, and looked after the
religious welfare of the little community, presiding over his class in
the chapel, on the great majority of Sundays, when the missionary was
engaged elsewhere.

The people looked up to Skipper Tom. The folk of Red Bay, like most
people who live much in the open and close to nature, have a deep
religious reverence and a wholesome fear of God. As their class leader
Skipper Tom guided them in their worship, and they looked upon him as
an example of upright living. So it was that he had a great burden of
responsibility, with the morals of the community thrust upon him.

In one respect Skipper Tom was fortunate. He did not inherit a debt,
and all his life he had kept free from the truck system under which
his neighbors toiled hopelessly, year in and year out.

He had, in one way or another, picked up enough education to read and
write and figure. He could read and interpret his Bible and he could
calculate his accounts. He knew that two times two make four. If he
sold two hundred quintals[C] of fish at $2.25 a quintal, he knew that
$450.00 were due him. No trader had a mortgage upon the product of
_his_ labor, as they had upon that of his neighbors, and he was free
to sell his fur and fish to whoever would pay him the highest price.

To be sure there were seasons when Skipper Tom was hard put to it to
make ends meet, and a scant diet and a good many hardships fell to his
lot and to the lot of his family. And when he had enough and his
neighbors were in need, he denied himself to see others through, and
even pinched himself to do it.

But he saved bit by bit until, at the age of forty-five, he was able
to purchase a cod trap, which was valued at about $400.00. The
purchase of this cod trap had been the ambition of his life and we can
imagine his joy when finally the day came that brought it to him. It
made more certain his catch of cod, and therefore lessened the
possibility of winters of privation.

It is interesting to know how the fishermen of The Labrador catch cod.
It may be worth while also to explain that when the Labradorman or
Newfoundlander speaks of "fish" he means cod in his vocabulary. A
trout is a trout, a salmon is a salmon and a caplin is a caplin, but a
cod is a fish. He never thinks of anything as fish but cod.

Early in the season, directly the ice breaks up, a little fish called
the caplin, which is about the size of a smelt, runs inshore in great
schools of countless millions, to spawn. I have seen them lying in
windrows along the shore where the receding tide had left them high
and dry upon the land. This is a great time for the dogs, which feast
upon them and grow fat. It is a great time also for the cod, which
feed on the caplin, and for the fishermen who catch the cod. Cod
follow the caplin schools, and this is the season when the fisherman,
if he is so fortunate as to own a trap, reaps his greatest harvest.

The trap is a net with four sides and a bottom, but no top. It is like
a great room without a ceiling. On one side is a door or opening. The
trap is submerged a hundred yards or so from shore, at a point where
the caplin, with the cod at their heels, are likely to run in. A net
attached to the trap at the center of the door is stretched to the
nearest shore.

Like a flock of geese that follows the old gander cod follow their
leaders. When the leaders pilot the school in close to shore in
pursuit of the caplin, they encounter the obstructing net, then follow
along its side with the purpose of going around it. This leads them
into the trap. Once into the trap they remain there until the
fishermen haul their catch.

The fisherman who owns no trap must rely upon the hook and line.
Though sometimes hook and line fishermen meet with good fortune, the
results are much less certain than with the traps and the work much
slower and vastly more difficult.

When the water is not too deep jigging with unbaited hooks proves
successful when fish are plentiful. Two large hooks fastened back to
back, with lead to act as a sinker, serve the purpose. This double
hook at the end of the line is dropped over the side of the boat and
lowered until it touches bottom. Then it is raised about three feet,
and from this point "jigged," or raised and lowered continuously until
taken by a cod.

[Illustration: "THE TRAP IS SUBMERGED A HUNDRED YARDS OR SO FROM
SHORE"]

In deep water, however, bait is necessary and the squid is a favorite
bait. A squid is a baby octopus, or "devil fish." The squid is
caught by jigging up and down a lead weight filled with wire spikes
and painted bright red. It seizes the weight with its tentacles. When
raised into the boat it releases its hold and squirts a small stream
of black inky fluid. In the water, when attacked, this inky fluid
discolors the water and screens it from its enemy.

The octopus grows to immense size, with many long arms. Two
Newfoundlanders were once fishing in an open boat, when an octopus
attacked the boat, reaching for it with two enormous arms, with the
purpose of dragging it down. One of the fishermen seized an ax that
lay handy in the boat and chopped the arms off. The octopus sank and
all the sea about was made black with its screen of ink. The sections
of arms cut off were nineteen feet in length. They are still on
exhibition in the St. Johns Museum, where I have seen them many times.
Shortly afterward a dead octopus was found, measuring, with tentacles
spread, forty feet over all. It was not, however, the same octopus
which attacked the fishermen, for that must have been much larger.

We can understand, then, how much Skipper Tom's cod trap meant to him.
We can visualize his pleasure, and share his joy. The trap was, to a
large extent, insurance against privation and hardship. It was his
reward for the self-denial of himself and his family for years, and
represented his life's savings.

When at last the ice cleared from his fishing place and the trap was
set, there was no prouder or happier man on The Labrador than Skipper
Tom. The trap was in the water when the _Princess May_, one Saturday
afternoon, steamed into Red Bay and Doctor Grenfell accepted the
hospitable invitation of Skipper Tom to spend the night at his home.

It was still early in the season and icebergs were plentiful enough,
as, indeed, they are the whole summer long. They are always a menace
to cod traps, for should a berg drift against a trap, that will be the
end of the trap forever. Fishermen watch their traps closely, and if
an iceberg comes so near as to threaten it the trap must be removed to
save it. A little lack of watchfulness leads to ruin.

"The trap's well set," said Skipper Tom, when Doctor Grenfell inquired
concerning it. "The ice is keepin' clear, but I watches close."

"What are the signs of fish?" asked the Doctor.

"Fine!" said Skipper Tom. "The signs be _wonderful_ fine."

"I hope you'll have a big year."

"There's a promise of un," Skipper Tom grinned happily. "The trap's
sure to do fine for us."

But nobody knows from one day to another what will happen on The
Labrador.

According to habit Skipper Tom was up bright and early on Sunday
morning and went for a look at the trap. When presently he returned
to join Doctor Grenfell at breakfast he was plainly worried.

"There's a berg driftin' down on the trap. We'll have to take her in,"
he announced.

"But 'tis Sunday," exclaimed his wife. "You'll never be workin' on
Sunday."

"Aye, 'tis Sunday and 'tis against my principles to fish on the
Sabbath day. I never did before, but 'tis to save our cod trap now.
The lads and I'll not fish. We'll just haul the trap."

"The Lard'll forgive _that, what_ever," agreed his wife.

Skipper Tom went out when he had eaten, but it was not long until he
returned.

"I'm not goin' to haul the trap today," he said quietly and
decisively. "There are those in this harbor," he added, turning to
Doctor Grenfell, "who would say, if I hauled that trap, that 'twould
be no worse for them to fish on Sunday than for me to haul my trap.
Then they'd go fishin' Sundays the same as other days, and none of un
would keep Sunday any more as a day of rest, as the Lard intends us to
keep un, and has told us in His own words we must keep un. I'll not
haul the trap this day, though 'tis sore hard to lose un."

For a principle, and because he was well aware of his influence upon
the folk of the settlement, Skipper Tom had made his decision to
sacrifice his cod trap and the earnings of his lifetime. His
conscience told him it would be wrong to do a thing that might lead
others to do wrong. When our conscience tells us it is wrong to do a
thing, it is wrong for us to do it. Conscience is the voice of God. If
we disobey our conscience God will soon cease to speak to us through
it. That is the way every criminal in the world began his downward
career. He disobeyed his conscience, and continued to disobey it until
he no longer heard it.

Skipper Tom never disobeyed his conscience. Now the temptation was
strong. His whole life's savings were threatened to be swept away.
There was still time to save the trap.

But Skipper Tom was strong. He turned his back upon the cod trap and
the iceberg and temptation, and as he and Doctor Grenfell climbed the
hill to the chapel he greeted his neighbors calmly and cheerily.

Every eye in Red Bay was on Skipper Tom that day. Every person knew of
the cod trap and its danger, and all that it meant to Skipper Tom, and
the temptation Skipper Tom was facing; but from all outward appearance
he had dismissed the cod trap and the iceberg from his mind.

When dusk fell that night the iceberg was almost upon the cod trap.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Pronounced kentel in Labrador; 112 pounds.




XIV

THE SAVING OF RED BAY


At an early hour on Sunday evening Skipper Tom went to his bed as
usual, and it is quite probable that within a period of ten minutes
after his head rested upon his pillow he was sleeping peacefully.
There was nothing else to do. He had no doubt that his cod trap was
lying under the iceberg a hopeless wreck.

Well, what of it? In any case he had acted as his conscience had him
act. He knew that there were those who would say that his conscience
was over-sensitive. Perhaps it was, but it was _his_ conscience, not
theirs. He was class leader in the chapel. He never forgot that. And
he was the leading citizen of the settlement. At whatever cost, he
must needs prove a good example to his neighbors in his deeds. Worry
would not help the case in the least. Too much of it would
incapacitate him. He had lived forty-four years without a cod trap,
and he had not starved, and he could finish his days without one.

"The Lard'll take care of us," Skipper Tom often said when they were
in a tight pinch, but he always added, "if we does our best to make
the best of things and look after ourselves and the things the Lard
gives us to do with. He calls on us to do that."

Though Skipper Tom could scarce see how his trap might have escaped
destruction he had no intention of resting upon that supposition and
perhaps he still entertained a lingering hope that it had escaped.
There is no doubt he prayed for its preservation, and he had strong
faith in prayer. At any rate, at half past eleven o'clock that night
he was up and dressed, and routed his two sons out of their beds. At
the stroke of midnight, waiting a tick longer perhaps, to be quite
sure that Sunday had gone and Monday morning had arrived, he and his
sons pushed out in their big boat.

Skipper Tom would not be doing his best if he did not make certain of
what had actually happened to the cod trap. Every one in Red Bay said
it had been destroyed, and no doubt of that. But no one knew for a
certainty, and there _might_ have been an intervention of Divine
Providence.

"The Lard helped us to get that trap," said Skipper Tom, "and 'tis
hard to believe he'll take un away from us so soon, for I tried not to
be vain about un, only just a bit proud of un and glad I has un. If
He's took un from me I'll know 'twere to try my faith, and I'll never
complain."

Down they rowed toward the iceberg, whose polished surface gleamed
white in the starlight.

"She's right over where the trap were set! The trap's gone," said one
of the sons.

"I'm doubtin'," Skipper Tom was measuring the distance critically with
his eye.

"The trap's tore to pieces," insisted the son with discouragement in
his voice.

"The berg's to the lee'ard of she," declared Skipper Tom finally.

"Tis too close t' shore."

"'Tis to the lee'ard!"

"Is you sure, now, Pop?"

"The trap's safe and sound! The berg _is_ t' the lee'ard!"

Tom was right. A shift of tide had come at the right moment to save
the trap.

"The Lard is good to us," breathed Skipper Tom. "He've saved our trap!
He always takes care of them that does what they feels is right. We'll
thank the Lard, lads."

In the trap was a fine haul of cod, and when they had removed the fish
the trap was transferred to a new position where it would be quite
safe until the menacing iceberg had drifted away.

There were seventeen families living in Red Bay. As settlements go,
down on The Labrador, seventeen cabins, each housing a family, is
deemed a pretty good sized place.

At Red Bay, as elsewhere on the coast, bad seasons for fishing came
now and again. These occur when the ice holds inshore so long that the
best run of cod has passed before the men can get at them; or because
for some unexplained reason the cod do not appear at all along certain
sections of the coast. When two bad seasons come in succession,
starvation looms on the horizon.

Seasons when the ice held in, Skipper Tom could not set his cod trap.
When this happened he was as badly off as any of his neighbors. In a
season when there were no fish to catch, it goes without saying that
his trap brought him no harvest. Fishing and trapping is a gamble at
best, and Skipper Tom, like his neighbors, had to take his chance, and
sometimes lost. If he accumulated anything in the good seasons, he
used his accumulation to assist the needy ones when the bad seasons
came, and, in the end, though he kept out of debt, he could not get
ahead, try as he would.

The seasons of 1904 and 1905 were both poor seasons, and when, in the
fall of 1905, Doctor Grenfell's vessel anchored in Red Bay Harbor he
found that several of the seventeen families had packed their
belongings and were expectantly awaiting his arrival in the hope that
he would take them to some place where they might find better
opportunities. They were destitute and desperate.

There was nowhere to take them where their condition would be better.
Grenfell, already aware of their desperate poverty, had been giving
the problem much consideration. The truck system was directly
responsible for the conditions at Red Bay and for similar conditions
at every other harbor along the coast. Something had to be done, and
done at once.

With the assistance of Skipper Tom and one or two others, Doctor
Grenfell called a meeting of the people of the settlement that
evening, to talk the matter over. The men and women were despondent
and discouraged, but nearly all of them believed they could get on
well enough if they could sell their fish and fur at a fair valuation,
and could buy their supplies at reasonable prices.

All of them declared they could no longer subsist at Red Bay upon the
restricted outfits allowed them by the traders, which amounted to
little or nothing when the fishing failed. They preferred to go
somewhere else and try their luck where perhaps the traders would be
more liberal. If they remained at Red Bay under the old conditions
they would all starve, and they might as well starve somewhere else.

Doctor Grenfell then suggested his plan. It was this. They would form
a company. They would open a store for themselves. Through the store
their furs and fish would be sent to market and they would get just as
big a price for their products as the traders got. They would buy the
store supplies at wholesale just as cheaply as the traders could buy
them. They would elect one of their number, who could keep accounts,
to be storekeeper. They would buy the things they needed from the
store at a reasonable price, and at the end of the year each would be
credited with his share of the profits. In other words, they would
organize a co-operative store and trading system and be their own
traders and storekeepers.

This meant breaking off from the traders with whom they had always
dealt and all hope of ever securing advance of supplies from them
again. It was a hazardous venture for the fishermen to make. They did
not understand business, but they were desperate and ready for any
chance that offered relief, and in the end they decided to do as
Doctor Grenfell suggested.

Each man was to have a certain number of shares of stock in the new
enterprise. The store would be supplied at once, and each family would
be able to get from it what was needed to live upon during the winter.
Any fish they might have on hand would be turned over to the store,
credited as cash, and sent to market at once, in a schooner to be
chartered for the purpose and this schooner would bring back to Red
Bay the winter's supplies.

A canvass then was made with the result that among the seventeen
families the entire assets available for purchasing supplies amounted
to but eighty-five dollars. This was little better than nothing.

Doctor Grenfell had faith in Skipper Tom and the others. They were
honest and hard-working folk. He knew that all they required was an
opportunity to make good. He was determined to give them the
opportunity, and he announced, without hesitation, that he would
personally lend them enough to pay for the first cargo and establish
the enterprise. Can any one wonder that the people love Grenfell? He
was the one man in the whole world that would have done this, or who
had the courage to do it. He knew well enough that he was calling down
upon his own head the wrath of the traders.

The schooner was chartered, the store was stocked and opened, and
there was enough to keep the people well-fed, well-clothed, happy and
comfortable through the first year.

In the beginning there were some of the men who were actually afraid
to have it known they were interested in the store, such was the fear
with which the traders had ruled them. They were so timid, indeed,
about the whole matter that they requested no sign designating the
building as a store be placed upon it. That, they declared, would make
the traders angry, and no one knew to what lengths these former
slaveholders might go to have revenge upon them. It is no easy matter
to shake oneself free from the traditions of generations and it was
hard for these trappers and fishermen to realize that they were freed
from their ancient bondage. But Doctor Grenfell fears no man, and,
with his usual aggressiveness, he nailed upon the front of the store a
big sign, reading:

  RED BAY CO-OPERATIVE STORE.

It was during the winter of 1905-1906 and ten years after the
launching of the enterprise and the opening of the store, that I drove
into Red Bay with a train of dogs one cold afternoon. Skipper Tom was
my host, and after we had a cheery cup of tea, he said:

"Come out. I wants to show you something."

He led me a little way down from his cottage to the store, and
pointing up at the big bold sign, which Grenfell had nailed there, he
announced proudly:

"'Tis _our_ co-operative store, the first on the whole coast. Doctor
Grenfell starts un for us."

Then after a pause:

"Doctor Grenfell be a wonderful man! He be a man of God."

As expected, there was a furore among the little traders when the news
was spread that a co-operative store had been opened in Red Bay. The
big Newfoundland traders and merchants were heartily in favor of it,
and even stood ready to give the experiment their support.

But the little traders who had dealt with the Red Bay settlement for
so long, and had bled the people and grown fat upon their labors, were
bitterly hostile. They began a campaign of defamation against Doctor
Grenfell and his whole field of work. They questioned his honesty, and
criticised the conduct of his hospitals. They even enlisted the
support of a Newfoundland paper in their opposition to him. They did
everything in their power to drive him from the coast, so that they
would have the field again in their own greedy hands. It was a
dastardly exhibition of selfishness, but there are people in the world
who will sell their own souls for profit.

Grenfell went on about his business of making people happier. He was
in the right. If the traders would fight he would give it to them. He
was never a quitter. He was the same Grenfell that beat up the big boy
at school, years before. He was going to have his way about it, and do
what he went to Labrador to do. He was going to do more. He was
determined now to improve the trading conditions of the people of
Labrador and northern Newfoundland, as well as to heal their sick.

From the day the co-operative store was opened in Red Bay not one fish
and not one pelt of fur has ever gone to market from that harbor
through a trader. The store has handled everything and it has
prospered and the people have prospered beyond all expectation. Every
one at Red Bay lives comfortably now. The debt to Doctor Grenfell was
long since paid and cancelled. And it is characteristic of him that he
would not accept one cent of interest. Shares of stock in the store,
originally issued at five dollars a share, are now worth one hundred
and four dollars a share, the difference being represented by profits
that have not been withdrawn. Every share is owned by the people of
the prosperous little settlement.

Up and down the Labrador coast and in northern Newfoundland nine
co-operative stores have been established by Doctor Grenfell since
that autumn evening when he met the Red Bay folk in conference and
they voted to stake their all, even their life, in the venture that
proved so successful. Two or three of the stores had to discontinue
because the people in the localities where they were placed lived so
far apart that there were not enough of them to make a store
successful.

Every one of these stores was a great venture to the people who cast
their lot with it. True they had little in money, but the stake of
their venture was literally in each case their life. The man who never
ventures never succeeds. Opportunity often comes to us in the form of
a venture. Sometimes, it is a desperate venture too.

Doctor Grenfell had to fight the traders all along the line. They even
had the Government of Newfoundland appoint a Commission to inquire
into the operation of the Missions as a "menace to honest trade." A
menace to honest trade! Think of it!

The result of the investigation proved that Grenfell and his mission
was doing a big self-sacrificing work, and the finest kind of work to
help the poor folk, and were doing it at a great cost and at no
profit to the mission. So down went the traders in defeat.

The fellow that's right is the fellow that wins in the end. The fellow
that's wrong is the fellow that is going to get the worst of it at the
proper time. Grenfell only tried to help others. He never reaped a
penny of personal gain. He always came out on top.

It's a good thing to be a scrapper sometimes, but if you're a scrapper
be a good one. Grenfell is a scrapper when it is necessary, and when
he has to scrap he goes at it with the best that's in him. He never
does things half way. He never was a quitter. When he starts out to do
anything he does it.




XV

A LAD OF THE NORTH


The needs of the children attracted Dr. Grenfell's attention from the
beginning. A great many of them were neglected because the parents
were too poor to provide for them properly. Those who were orphaned
were thrown upon the care of their neighbors, and though the neighbors
were willing they were usually too poor to take upon themselves this
added burden.

There were no schools save those conducted by the Brethren of the
Moravian missions among the Eskimos to the northward, and these were
Eskimo schools where the people were taught to read and write in their
own strange language, and to keep their accounts. But for the English
speaking folk south of the Eskimo coast no provision for schools had
ever been made.

The hospitals were overflowing with the sick or injured, and there was
no room for children, unless they were in need of medical or surgical
attention. There was great need of a home for the orphans where they
would be cared for and receive motherly training and attention and
could go to school.

Dr. Grenfell had thought about this a great deal. He had made the
best arrangements possible for the actually destitute little ones by
finding more or less comfortable homes for them, and seeking
contributions from generous folk in the United States, Canada and
Great Britain to pay for their expense.

But it was not, perhaps, until Pomiuk, a little Eskimo boy, came under
his care that he finally decided that the establishment of a
children's home could no longer be delayed.

Pomiuk's home was in the far north of Labrador, where no trees grow,
and where the seasons are quite as frigid as those of northern
Greenland. In summer he lived with his father and mother in a skin
tent, or tupek, and in winter in a snow igloo, or iglooweuk.

Pomiuk's mother cooked the food over the usual stone lamp, which also
served to heat their igloo in winter. This lamp, which was referred to
in an earlier chapter, and described as a hollowed stone in the form
of a half moon, was an exceedingly crude affair, measuring eighteen
inches long on its straight side and nine inches broad at its widest
part. When it was filled with oil squeezed from a piece of seal
blubber, the blubber was suspended over it at the back that the heat,
when the wick of moss was lighted, would cause the blubber oil to
continue to drip and keep the lamp supplied with oil. The lamp gave
forth a smoky, yellow flame. This was the only fireside that little
Pomiuk knew. You and I would not think it a very cheerful one,
perhaps, but Pomiuk was accustomed to cold and he looked upon it as
quite comfortable and cheerful enough.

Ka-i-a-chou-ouk, Pomiuk's father, was a hunter and fisherman, as are
all the Eskimos. He moved his tupek in summer, or built his igloo of
blocks of snow in winter, wherever hunting and fishing were the best,
but always close to the sea.

Here, under the shadow of mighty cliffs and towering, rugged
mountains, by the side of the great water, Pomiuk was born and grew
into young boyhood, and played and climbed among the mountain crags or
along the ocean shore with other boys. He loved the rugged, naked
mountains, they stood so firm and solid! No storm or gale could ever
make them afraid, or weaken them. Always they were the same, towering
high into the heavens, untrod and unchanged by man, just as they had
stood facing the arctic storms through untold ages.

From the high places he could look out over the sea, where icebergs
glistened in the sunshine, and sometimes he could see the sail of a
fishing schooner that had come out of the mysterious places beyond the
horizon. He loved the sea. Day and night in summer the sound of surf
pounding ceaselessly upon the cliffs was in his ears. It was music to
him, and his lullaby by night.

But he loved the sea no less in winter when it lay frozen and silent
and white. As far as his vision reached toward the rising sun, the
endless plain of ice stretched away to the misty place where the ice
and sky met. Pomiuk thought it would be a fine adventure, some night,
when he was grown to be a man and a great hunter, to take the dogs and
komatik and drive out over the ice to the place from which the sun
rose, and be there in the morning to meet him. He had no doubt the sun
rose out of a hole in the ice, and it did not seem so far away.

Pomiuk's world was filled with beautiful and wonderful things. He
loved the bright flowers that bloomed under the cliffs when the winter
snows were gone, and the brilliant colors that lighted the sky and
mountains and sea, when the sun set of evenings. He loved the mists,
and the mighty storms that sent the sea rolling in upon the cliffs in
summer. He never ceased to marvel at the aurora borealis, which by
night flashed over the heavens in wondrous streams of fire and lighted
the darkened world. His father told him the aurora borealis was the
spirits of their departed people dancing in the sky. He learned the
ways of the wild things in sea and on land and never tired of
following the tracks of beasts in the snow, or of watching the seals
sunning themselves on rocks or playing about in the water.

The big wolf dogs were his special delight. His father kept nine of
them, and many an exciting ride Pomiuk had behind them when his father
took him on the komatik to hunt seals or to look at fox traps, or to
visit the Trading Post.

When he was a wee lad his father made for him a small dog whip of
braided walrus hide. This was Pomiuk's favorite possession. He
practiced wielding it, until he became so expert he could flip a
pebble no larger than a marble with the tip end of the long lash; and
he could snap and crack the lash with a report like a pistol shot.

As he grew older and stronger he practiced with his father's whip,
until he became quite as expert with that as with his own smaller one.
This big whip had a wooden handle ten inches in length, and a supple
lash of braided walrus hide thirty-five feet long. The lash was about
an inch in diameter where it joined the handle, tapering to a thin tip
at the end.

One summer day, when Pomiuk was ten years of age, a strange ship
dropped anchor off the rocky shore where Pomiuk's father and several
other Eskimo families had pitched their tupeks, while they fished in
the sea near by for cod or hunted seals. A boat was launched from the
ship, and as it came toward the shore all of the excited Eskimos from
the tupeks, men, women and children, and among them Pomiuk, ran down
to the landing place to greet the visitors, and as they ran every one
shouted, "Kablunak! Kablunak!" which meant, "Stranger! Stranger!"

Some white men and an Eskimo stepped out of the boat, and in the
hospitable, kindly manner of the Eskimo Pomiuk's father and Pomiuk and
their friends greeted the strangers with handshakes and cheerful
laughter, and said "Oksunae" to each as he shook his hand, which is
the Eskimo greeting, and means "Be strong."

The Eskimo that came with the ship was from an Eskimo settlement
called Karwalla, in Hamilton Inlet, on the east of Labrador, but a
long way to the south of Nachvak Bay where Pomiuk's people lived. He
could speak English as well as Eskimo, and acted as interpreter for
the strangers.

This Eskimo explained that the white men had come from America to
invite some of the Labrador Eskimos to go to America to see their
country. People from all the nations of the world, he said, were to
gather there to meet each other and to get acquainted. They were to
bring strange and wonderful things with them, that the people of each
nation might see how the people of other nations made and used their
things, and how they lived. They wished the Labrador Eskimos to come
and show how they dressed their skins and made their skin clothing and
skin boats, and to bring with them dogs and sledges, and harpoons and
other implements of the hunt.

The white men promised it would be a most wonderful experience for
those that went. They agreed to take them and all their things on the
ship and after the big affair in America was over bring them back to
their homes, and give them enough to make them all rich for the rest
of their lives.

The Eskimos were naturally quite excited with the glowing
descriptions, the opportunity to travel far into new lands, and the
prospect of wealth and happiness offered them when they again returned
to their Labrador homes. Pomiuk and his mother were eager for the
journey, but his father did not care to leave the land and the life he
knew. He decided that he had best remain in Labrador and hunt; but he
agreed that Pomiuk's mother might go to make skin boots and clothing,
and Pomiuk might go with her and take the long dog whip to show how
well he could use it.

And so one day Pomiuk and his mother said goodbye to his father, and
with several other Eskimos sailed away to the United States, destined
to take their place as exhibits at the great World's Fair in Chicago.

The suffering of the Eskimos in the strange land to which they were
taken was terrible. In Labrador they lived in the open, breathing
God's fresh air. In Chicago they were housed in close and often poorly
ventilated quarters. The heat was unbearable, and through all the long
hours of day and night when they were on exhibition they were
compelled to wear their heavy winter skin or fur clothing. They were
unaccustomed to the food. Some of them died, and the white men buried
them with little more thought or ceremony than was given those of
their dogs that died.

Pomiuk, in spite of his suffering, kept his spirits. He loved to wield
his long dog whip. It was his pride. Visitors at the fair pitched
nickles and dimes into the enclosure where the Eskimos and their
exhibits were kept. Pomiuk with the tip of his thirty-five foot lash
would clip the coins, and laugh with delight, for every coin he
clipped was to be his. He was the life of the Eskimo exhibit. Visitors
could always distinguish his ringing laugh. He was always smiling.

The white men who had induced the Eskimos to leave their homes failed
to keep their promise when the fair closed. The poor Eskimos were
abandoned in a practically penniless condition and no means was
provided to return them to their homes. To add to the distress of
Pomiuk's mother, Pomiuk fell and injured his hip. Proper surgical
treatment was not supplied, the injury, because of this neglect, did
not heal, and Pomiuk could no longer run about or walk or even stand
upon his feet.

Those of the Eskimos who survived the heat and unaccustomed climate,
in some manner, God alone knows how, found their way to Newfoundland.
Pomiuk, in his mother's care, was among them. The hospitality of big
hearted fishermen of Newfoundland, who sheltered and fed the Eskimos
in their cabins, kept them through the winter. It was a period of
intense suffering for poor little Pomiuk, whose hip constantly grew
worse.

When summer came again, Doctor Frederick Cook, the explorer, bound to
the Arctic on an exploring expedition, heard of the stranded Eskimos,
and carried some of them to their Labrador homes on his ship; and when
the schooners of the great fishing fleets sailed north, kindly
skippers made room aboard their little craft for others of the
destitute Eskimos. Thus Pomiuk, once so active and happy, now a
helpless cripple, found his way back on a fishing schooner to
Labrador.

We can understand, perhaps, the joy and hope with which Pomiuk looked
again upon the rock-bound coast that he loved so well. On _these_
shores he had lived care-free and happy and full of bounding health
until the deceitful white men had lured him away. He had no doubt that
once again in his own native land and among his own people in old
familiar surroundings, he would soon get well and be as strong as ever
he had been to run over the rocks and to help his father with the dogs
and traps and at the fishing.

Pomiuk could scarcely wait to meet his father. He laughed and
chattered eagerly of the good times he and his father would have
together. He was deeply attached to his father who had always been
kind and good to him, and who loved him better, even, than his mother
loved him.

Pomiuk's heart beat high, when at last, one day, the vessel drew into
the narrow channel that leads between high cliffs into Nachvak Bay. He
looked up at the rocky walls towering two thousand feet above him on
either side. They were as firm and unchanging as always. He loved
them, and his eyes filled with happy tears. Just beyond, at the other
end of the channel, lay the broad bay and the white buildings of the
Hudson's Bay Company's trading post, where his father used to bring
him sometimes with the dogs in winter or in the boat in summer. What
fine times he and his father had on those excursions! And somewhere,
back there, camped in his tupek, was his father. What a surprise his
coming would be to his father!

Pomiuk was carried ashore at the Post. Eskimos camped near-by crowded
down to greet him and his mother and the other wanderers who had
returned with them. It would be a short journey now in the boat to his
father's fishing place and his own dear home in their snug tupek. What
a lot of things he had to tell his father! And at home, with his
father's help he would soon be well and strong again.

Then he heard some one say his father was dead. Dazed with grief he
was taken to one of the Eskimo tupeks where he was to make his home.
All that day and for days afterward, days of deep, unspoken sorrow,
the thought that he would never again hear his father's dear voice was
in his mind and forcing itself upon him. The world had grown suddenly
dark for the crippled boy. All of his fine plans were vanished.

One day late that fall Dr. Grenfell found Pomiuk lying helpless and
naked upon the rocks near the tupek of the Eskimo who had taken him
in. The little lad was carried aboard the hospital ship. He was washed
and his diseased hip dressed, he was given clean warm clothing to
wear, and altogether he was made more comfortable than he had been in
many months. Then, with Pomiuk as a patient on board, the ship steamed
away.

Thus Pomiuk bade goodbye to his home, to the towering cliffs and
rugged sturdy mountains that he loved so well, and to his people. The
dear days when he was so jolly and happy in health were only a memory,
though he was to know much happiness again. Perhaps, lying helpless
upon the deck of the hospital ship, he shed a tear as he recalled the
fine trips he used to have when his father took him to the post with
dogs and komatik in winter, or he and his father went cruising in the
boat along the coast in summer. And now he would never see his dear
father again, and could never be a great hunter like his father, as he
had once dreamed he would be.

But the cruise was a pleasant one, with every moment something new to
attract his attention. Dr. Grenfell was as kind and considerate as a
father. Pomiuk had never known such care and attention. His diseased
hip was dressed regularly, and had not been so free from pain since it
was injured. Appetizing, wholesome meals were served him. Everyone
aboard ship did everything possible for his comfort and entertainment.

Pomiuk was taken to the Indian Harbor Hospital where he remained until
the cold of winter settled, and the hospital was closed for the winter
season. Then he was removed to a comfortable home up the Bay. Under
careful surgical treatment his hip improved until he was able to get
about well on crutches.

There was never a happier boy in the world than this little Eskimo
cripple in his new surroundings and with his new friends. He laughed
and played about quite as though he had the use of his limbs, and had
forgotten his affliction. During the winter one of the good
missionaries from the Moravian Mission at Hopedale visited him and
baptized him "Gabriel"--the angel of comfort. He was a comfort indeed
and a joy to those who had his care.




XVI

MAKING A HOME FOR THE ORPHANS


The next winter Pomiuk was taken to the hospital at Battle Harbor
where he could receive more constant surgical treatment. He was a joy
to the doctors and nurses. His face was always happy and smiling. He
never complained, and his amiable disposition endeared him not only to
the doctors and nurses but to the other patients as well.

But Pomiuk was never to be well again. The diseased hip was beyond
control, and was wearing down his constitution and his strength. One
day he fell suddenly very ill. For a week he lay in bed, at times
unconscious, and then early one morning passed away.

Many shed tears for Pomiuk when he was gone. They missed his joyous
laughter and his smiling face. Doctor Grenfell missed him sorely. He
could not forget the suffering, naked little boy that he had rescued
from the rocks of Nachvak Bay, and he decided that some provision
should be made to care for the other orphaned, homeless, neglected
children of Labrador. In some way, he decided, the funds for such a
home had to be found, though he had no means then at his disposal for
the purpose. He further decided that the home must not be an
institution merely but a real home made pleasant for the boys and
girls, where they would have motherly care and sympathy, and where
they should have a school to go to like the children of our own
favoured land.

With cheerful optimism and heroic determination Doctor Grenfell set
for himself the task of establishing such a home. And in the end great
things grew out of the suffering and death of Gabriel Pomiuk. The
splendid courage and cheerfulness of the little Eskimo lad was to
result in happiness for many other little sufferers. Now, as always it
was, with Doctor Grenfell, "I can if I will,"--none of the uncertainty
of, "I will if I can." He pitched into the work of raising money to
build that children's home. He lectured, and wrote, and talked about
it in his usual enthusiastic way, and money began to come to him from
good people all over the world. At length enough was raised and the
home was built.

He had already picked up and taken into his mission family so many
boys and girls, orphans or otherwise, that were without home or
shelter, and that he could not leave behind him to suffer and die,
that he had nearly enough on his hands to populate the new building
before it was ready for them. Indeed he soon found himself almost in
the position of the "old woman that lived in a shoe," and "had so
many children she didn't know what to do." His big kind fatherly heart
would never permit him to abandon a homeless child, and so he took
them under his care, and somehow always managed to provide for them.

It was about the time of Pomiuk's death, I believe, that the first of
these children came to him. One day, when cruising north in the
_Strathcona_, he was told that a family living in an isolated and
lonely spot on the Labrador coast required the attention of a doctor.
He answered the call at once.

When he approached the bleak headland where the cabin stood, and his
vessel hove her anchor, he was quite astonished that no one came out
of the cabin to offer welcome, as is the custom with Labradormen
everywhere when vessels anchor near their homes. He and his mate were
put ashore in a boat, and as they walked up the trail to the cabin
still no one appeared and no smoke issued from the stovepipe, which,
rising through the roof, served as a chimney. When he lifted the latch
he was quite decided no one, after all, was at home.

Upon entering the cabin a shocking scene presented itself. The mother
of the family lay upon the bed with wide-open stare. Doctor Grenfell's
practiced eye told him she was dead. The father, a Scotch fisherman
and trapper, was stretched upon the floor, helplessly ill, and a hasty
examination proved that he was dying. Five frightened, hungry, cold
little children were huddled in a corner.

That night the father died, though every effort was made to revive him
and save his life. Grenfell and his crew gave the man and woman as
decent a Christian burial as the wilderness and conditions would
permit, and when all was over the Doctor found five small children on
his hands.

An uncle of the children lived upon the coast and this uncle
volunteered to take one of them into his home. The other four Doctor
Grenfell carried south on the hospital ship. There was no proper
provision for their care at St. Anthony, his headquarters hospital,
and he advertised in a New England paper for homes for them. One
response was received, and this from the wife of a New England farmer,
offering to provide for two. The Doctor sent two to the farm, the
other two remaining at St. Anthony hospital.

The next child to come to him was a baby of three years. The child's
father had died and the mother married a widower with a large family
of his own. He was a hard-hearted rascal, and the mother was a selfish
woman with small love for her baby. The man declined to permit her to
take it into his home and she left it in a mud hut, a cellar-like
place, with no other floor than the earth. A kind-hearted woman, who
lived near by, ran in now and again to see the baby and to take it
scraps of food and give it some care. She could not adopt it, for she
and her husband were scarce able to feed the many mouths in their own
family.

So alone this tiny little girl of three lived in the mud hut through
the long days and the longer and darker nights. There was no mother's
knee at which to kneel; no one to teach her to lisp her first prayer;
no one to tuck her snugly into a little white bed; no one to kiss her
before she slept. O, how lonely she must have been! Think of those
chilly Labrador nights, when she huddled down on the floor in the
ragged blanket that was her bed! How many nights she must have cried
herself to sleep with loneliness and fear!

Here, in the mud hut, Doctor Grenfell found her one day. She was
sitting on the earthen floor, talking to herself and playing with a
bit of broken crockery, her only toy. He gathered her into his big
strong arms and I have no doubt that tears filled his eyes as he
looked into her innocent little face and carried her down to his boat.

In a locker on his ship, the _Strathcona_, there were neat little
clothes that thoughtful children in our own country had sent him to
give to the destitute little ones of Labrador. He turned the baby girl
over to his big mate, who had babies of his own at home. The mate
stroked her tangled hair with a brawney hand, and talked baby talk to
her, and as she snuggled close in his fatherly arms, he carried her
below decks. The baby's mother would not have known her little
daughter if, two hours later, she had gone aboard the _Strathcona_ and
heard the peals of laughter and seen the happy little thing, bathed,
dressed in neat clean clothes, and well fed, playing on deck with a
pretty doll that Doctor Grenfell had somewhere found.

It was on his last cruise south late one fall, and not long before
navigation closed, that Doctor Grenfell learned that a family of
liveyeres encamped on one of the coastal islands was in a destitute
condition, without food and practically unsheltered and unclothed.

He went immediately in search, steaming nearly around the island, and
discerning no sign of life he had decided that the people had gone,
when a little curl of smoke rising from the center of the island
caught his eye. He at once brought his vessel to, let go the anchor,
lowered away a boat and accompanied by his mate pulled ashore. Making
the boat fast the two men scrambled up the rocks and set out in the
direction from which they had seen the smoke rise.

Near the center of the island they suddenly brought up before a cliff,
against which, supported by poles, was stretched a sheet of old
canvas, pieced out by bits of matting and bagging, to form the roof of
a lean-to shelter. In front of the lean-to a fire burned, and under
the shelter by the fire sat a scantily clad, bedraggled woman. In her
arms she held a bundle of rags, which proved to envelop a tiny new
born baby, nursing at her breast.

A little girl of five, barefooted and ragged, slunk timidly back as
the strangers approached. The woman grunted a greeting, but did not
rise.

"Where is your man?" asked Doctor Grenfell.

"He's right handy, huntin' gulls," she answered.

Upon inquiry it was learned that there were three boys in the family
and that they were also "somewheres handy about." A search discovered
two of them, lads of seven and eight, practically naked, but tough as
little bears, feeding upon wild berries. Their bodies were tanned
brown by sun and wind, and streaked and splotched with the blue and
red stain of berry juice. They were jabbering contentedly and both
were as plump and happy in their foraging as a pair of young cubs.

Snow had begun to fall before Doctor Grenfell followed by the two lads
returned to the fire at the cliff, soon to be joined by the boys'
father, tall, gaunt and bearded. His hair, untrimmed for many weeks,
was long and snarled. He was nearly barefooted and his clothing hung
in tatters. In one hand he carried a rusty old trade gun, (a
single-barreled, old-fashioned muzzle loading shotgun), in the other
he clutched by its wing a gull that he had recently shot. Following
the father came an older lad, perhaps fourteen years of age, little
better clothed than his two brothers and as wild and unkempt in
appearance as the father.

"Evenin'," greeted the man, as he leaned his gun against the cliff and
dropped the gull by its side.

It was cold. The now thickly falling snow spoke loudly of the Arctic
winter so near at hand. The liveyere and his family, however, seemed
not to feel or mind the chill in the least, and apparently gave no
more thought to the morrow or the coming winter, upon whose frigid
threshold they stood, than did the white-winged gulls flying low over
the water.

Fresh wood was placed upon the fire, and Grenfell and the mate joined
the family circle around the blaze.

"Do you kill much game here on the island?" asked Doctor Grenfell.

"One gull is all I gets today," announced the man. "They bides too far
out. I has no shot. I uses pebbles for shot, and 'tis hard to hit un
with pebbles. 'Tis wonderful hard to knock un down with no shot."

"What have you to eat?" inquired the Doctor. "Have you any provisions
on hand?"

"All us has is the gull," the man glanced toward the limp bird. "We
eats berries."

"'Tis the Gover'me't's place to give us things," broke in the woman in
a high key. "The Gov'me't don't give us no flour and nothin'."

"It's snowing and the berries will soon be covered," suggested
Grenfell. "You can't live without something to eat and now winter is
coming you'll need a house to live in. You haven't even a tent."

"Us would make out and the Gover'me't gave us a bit o' flour and tea
and some clodin' (clothing)," harped the woman. "The Gover'me't don't
give un to us. The Gover'me't folks don't care what becomes o' we."

"How are you going to take care of these children this winter?" asked
Grenfell. "You can't feed them and without clothing they'll freeze.
Let us take them with us. We'll give them plenty to eat and clothe
them well."

"Don't be sayin' now you'll let un go!" broke in the mother in a high
voice, turning to the man, who stood mute. "Don't be givin' away your
own flesh and blood now! Don't let un go."

"You can't keep yourselves and these children alive through the
winter. Some of you will starve or freeze," persisted Grenfell.
"Suppose you let us have the two young lads and the little maid. We'll
take good care of them and we'll give you some clothing we have aboard
the vessel, and some flour and tea to start you."

"And a bit o' shot for my gun?" asked the man, showing interest.

"Don't be givin' away your own flesh and blood!" interjected the woman
in the same high key. "'Tis the Gov'me't's place to be givin' us what
we needs, clodin' and grub too."

"I'll let you have one o' th' lads and you lets me have a bit o'
shot," the man compromised.

The sympathetic mate, with no intention of giving the man an
opportunity to change his mind, seized the naked boy nearest him,
tucked the lad, kicking and struggling, under one arm, and started for
the boat, but upon Doctor Grenfell's suggestion waited, with the lad
still under his arm, for developments.

In the beginning, to be sure, Doctor Grenfell had intended to issue
supplies to the man, whether or no. But no matter how much or what
supplies were issued there was no doubt these people would be reduced
to severe suffering before summer came again. He wished to save the
children from want, and to give them a chance to make good in the
world as he believed they would with opportunity.

The oldest boy could be of assistance to his father in the winter
hunting, and he could scarce expect the mother to give up her new-born
baby. Therefore negotiations were confined to a view of securing the
two small boys and the little girl.

Presently, in spite of violent protests from the mother, the father
was moved, by promises of additional supplies, to consent to Grenfell
taking the other boy. And immediately the man had said, "Take un
both," the mate seized the second lad and with a youngster struggling
under each arm, and with four bare legs kicking in a wild but vain
effort for freedom and two pairs of lusty young lungs howling
rebellion, he strode exultantly away through the falling snow to the
boat with his captives.

No arguments and no amount of promised stores could move the father
to open his mouth again, and Grenfell was finally compelled to be
content with the two boys and to leave the little girl behind him to
face the hardships and rigors of a northern winter. Poor little thing!
She did not realize the wonderful opportunity her parents had denied
her.

When negotiations were ended Doctor Grenfell arranged for the
liveyeres to occupy a comfortable cabin on the mainland. He conspired
with the agent of the Hudson's Bay Company, with the result that they
were properly clothed and provisioned, a better gun was found for the
man and an ample supply of ammunition.

Hundreds of stories might be told of the destitute little ones that
have been, since the day he found Pomiuk on the rocks of Nochvak,
gathered together by Doctor Grenfell and tenderly cared for in the
Children's Home that was built at St. Anthony. There was a little girl
whose feet were so badly frozen that her father had to chop them both
off with an ax to save her life, and who Doctor Grenfell found
helpless in the poor little cabin where her people lived. I wish there
was time and room to tell about her. He took her away with him, and
healed her wounds, and fitted cork feet to her stumps of legs so that
she could go to school and run around and play with the other
children. Indeed, she learned to use her new feet so well that today,
if you saw her you would never guess that her feet were not her real
ones.

And there was a little boy whose father was frozen to death at his
trapping one winter, a bright little chap now in the home and going to
school.

These are but a few of the many, many children that have been made
happy and have been trained at the Home and under Doctor Grenfell's
care to useful lives. Some of them have worked their way through
college. Some of the boys served in the Great War at the front. Many
are holding positions of importance. Let us see, however, what became
of those particular ones, mentioned in this chapter.

One of the Scotch trapper's daughters found by Doctor Grenfell in the
lonely cabin when her mother lay dead and her father dying is a
trained nurse. The others are also in responsible positions.

The baby of the mud hut is a charming young lady, a graduate of a
school in the United States, and the successful member of a useful
profession.

Both of the little naked boys taken from the island that snowy day are
grown men now, and graduates of the famous Pratt Institute in
Brooklyn, New York. One is a master carpenter, the other the manager
of a big trading store on the Labrador coast.

Now, as I write, in the fall of 1921, the walls of a new fine concrete
home for the children are under construction at St. Anthony, to be
used in conjunction with the original wooden building which is crowded
to capacity. Children of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain
giving of their pennies made the new building possible. More money is
needed to furnish it, but enough will surely be given for the homeless
little ones of the Labrador must be cared for.

And so, in the end, great things grew out of the suffering and death
of Gabriel Pomiuk, the little Eskimo lad. His splendid courage and
cheerfulness has led to happiness for many other little sufferers.




XVII

THE DOGS OF THE ICE TRAIL


One of the most interesting features of Labrador life in winter is dog
travel. The dogs are interesting the year round, for they are always
in evidence winter and summer, but in the fall when the sea freezes
and snow comes, they take a most important place in the life of the
people of the coast. They are the horses and automobiles and
locomotives of the country. No one can travel far without them.

The true Eskimo dog of Labrador, the "husky," as he is called, is the
direct descendant of the great Labrador wolf. The Labrador wolf is the
biggest and fiercest wolf on the North American continent, and the
Eskimo dog of northern Labrador, his brother, is the biggest and
finest sledge dog to be found anywhere in the world. He is larger and
more capable than the Greenland species of which so much has been
written, and he is quite superior to those at present found in Alaska.

The true husky dog of northern Labrador has the head and jawls and
upstanding ears of the wild wolf. He has the same powerful shoulders,
thick forelegs, and bristling mane. He does not bark like other dogs,
but has the characteristic howl of the wolf. There is apparently but
one difference between him and the wild wolf, and this comes,
possibly, through domestication. He curls his tail over his back,
while the wolf does not. Even this distinction does not always hold,
for I have seen and used dogs that did not curl their tail. These big
fellows often weigh a full hundred pounds and more.

Indeed these northern huskies and the wild wolves mix together
sometimes to fight, and sometimes in good fellowship. Once I had a
wolf follow my komatik for two days, and at night when we stopped and
turned our dogs loose the wolf joined them and staid the night with
them only to slink out of rifle shot with the coming of dawn.

One of my friends, an agent of the Hudson's Bay Company, was once
traveling with a native Labradorman driver along the Labrador coast,
when his train of eight big huskies, suddenly becoming excited, gave
an extra strain on their traces and snapped the "bridle," the long
walrus hide thong that connects the traces with the komatik. Away the
dogs ran, heading over a low hill, apparently in pursuit of some game
they had scented.

[Illustration: "PLEASE LOOK AT MY TONGUE, DOCTOR!"]

[Illustration: "NEXT!"]

My friend, on snowshoes, ran in pursuit, while the driver made a
circuit around the hill in the hope of heading the dogs off. Ten
minutes later the team swung down over the hill and back to the
komatik. From a distance the men saw them and also turned back, but
to their astonishment they counted not the eight dogs that composed
their team, but thirteen. On drawing nearer they realized that five
great wolves had joined the dogs.

The men's guns were lashed on the komatik, and both were, therefore,
unarmed, and before they could reach the komatik and unlash the rifles
the wolves had fled over the hill and out of range. The dogs, however,
answered the driver's call and were captured.

One winter evening a few years ago I drove my dog team to the isolated
cabin of Tom Broomfield, a trapper of the coast, where I was to spend
the night. When our dogs were fed and we had eaten our own supper, Tom
went to a chest and drew forth a huge wolf skin, which he held up for
my inspection.

"He's a big un, now! A wonderful big un!" he commented. "Most big
enough all by hisself for a man's sleepin' bag!"

"It's a monster!" I exclaimed. "Where did you kill it?"

"Right here handy t' th' door," he grinned. "I were standin' just
outside th' door o' th' porch when I fires and knocks he over th'
first shot."

"He were here th' day before Tom kills he," interjected Tom's wife.
"He gives me a wonderful scare that wolf does. I were alone wi' th'
two young ones."

"Tell me about it," I suggested.

"'Twere this way sir," said Tom, spreading the pelt over a big chest
where we could admire it. "I were away 'tendin' fox traps, and I has
th' komatik and all th' dogs, savin' one, which I leaves behind. Th'
woman were bidin' home alone wi' th' two young ones. In th' evenin'[D]
her hears dogs a fightin' outside, and thinkin' 'tis one o' th' team
broke loose and runned home that's fightin' th' dog I leaves behind,
she starts t' go out t' beat un apart and stop th' fightin' when she
sees 'tis a wolf and no dog at all. 'Twere a wonderful big un too. He
were inside that skin you sees there, sir, and you can see for
yourself th' bigness o' he.

"Her tries t' take down th' rifle, th' one as is there on th' pegs,
sir. Th' wolf and th' dog be now fightin' agin' th' door, and th' door
is bendin' in and handy t' breakin' open. She's a bit scared, sir, and
shakin' in th' hands, and she makes a slip, and th' rifle, he goes
off, bang! and th' bullet makes that hole marrin' th' timber above th'
windy."

Tom arose and pointed out a bullet hole above the window.

"Then th' wolf, he goes off too, bein' scared at th' shootin'.

"I were home th' next day mendin' dog harness, when I hears th' dogs
fightin', and I takes a look out th' windy, and there I sees that wolf
fightin' wi' th' dogs, and right handy t' th' house. I just takes my
rifle down spry as I can, and goes out. When th' dogs sees me open th'
door they runs away and leaves th' wolf apart from un, and I ups and
knocks he over wi' a bullet, sir. I gets he fair in th' head first
shot I takes, and there be th' skin. 'Tis worth a good four dollars
too, for 'tis an extra fine one."

They are treacherous beasts, but, like the wolf, cowardly, these big
dogs of the Labrador. If a man should trip and fall among them, the
likelihood is he would be torn to pieces by their fangs before he
could help himself. You cannot make pals of them as you can of other
dogs. They would as lief snap off the hand that reared and feeds them
as not. It is never safe for a stranger to move among a pack of them
without a stick in his hand. But a threatened kick or the swing of a
menacing stick will send them off crawling and whining.

The Hudson's Bay Company once had a dozen or so of these big fellows
at Cartwright Post, in Sandwich Bay. They were exceptionally fine dogs
of the true husky breed, brought down from one of the more northerly
posts, and the agent was proud of them. This was the same agent whose
dogs ran away to chum with the wolves, and I believe these were some
of the same dogs. They were splendid animals in harness, well broken
and tireless travelers on the trail.

One evening, late in the fall, the agent's wife was standing at the
open door of the post house, and her little boy, a lad of about your
years, was playing near the doorstep.

Labrador dogs are fed but once a day, and this is always in the
evening. It was feeding time for the dogs, and a servant down at the
feed house, where the dog rations were kept, called them. With a rush
they responded. Just when some of them were passing the post house the
little boy in his play stumbled and fell. In an instant the dogs were
upon him. The mother, with rare presence of mind, sprang forward,
seized the boy, sprang back into the house and slammed the door upon
the dogs.

The boy was on the ground but a moment, but in that moment he was
horribly torn by the sharp fangs. At one place his entrails were laid
bare. There were over sixty wounds on his little body. The dogs lapped
up the blood that fell upon the ground and doorstep. That night the
pack, like a pack of hungry wolves, congregated outside the window
where they heard the child crying and moaning with pain and all night
howled as wolves howl when they have cornered prey.

The following morning it happened providentially that Doctor
Grenfell's hospital ship steamed into Cartwright Harbor and dropped
anchor. The Doctor himself was aboard. He took the boy under his
charge and the little one's life was saved through his skill.

After the attack the dogs became extremely aggressive and surly. They
were like a pack of fierce wolves. No one about the place was safe,
and the agent was compelled to shoot every animal in defense of human
life. Usually in Labrador when dogs are guilty of attacking people
they are hung by the neck to a gibbet until dead, and left hanging for
several days. I have seen dogs thus hanging after execution.

When I left Davis Inlet Post of the Hudson's Bay Company with my dog
team one cold winter morning, a native trapper told me that he would
follow later in the day and probably overtake me at the Moravian
Mission Station at Hopedale. We made half the journey to Hopedale that
night and spent the night in a native cabin. A storm was threatening
the next morning, but, nevertheless, we set forward. Shortly after
midday the storm broke with a gale of wind and driving, smothering
snow, and a temperature 30 degrees below zero. Every moment it
increased in fury, but fortunately we reached the mission station
before it had reached its worst, and here remained stormbound for two
days, during which time the trapper did not appear.

Later I learned that, with his wife and young son he left Davis Inlet
a few hours after our departure. After the storm had abated his dog
team appeared at Davis Inlet, but he and his wife and child were not
heard from. A searching party set out, but could find no trace of the
missing ones.

In the spring, when the snow had begun to melt, the komatik was found
and scattered about it were human bones. It was supposed that the man
had halted to camp and await the passing of the storm. Benumbed by the
cold he had probably fallen among his dogs, and they had torn him to
pieces, and with whetted appetite had then attacked and killed his
wife and child.

These great wolf dogs of the north are quite different from those of
the south. It is doubtful if today a true Eskimo dog is to be found
south of Sandwich Bay, and here and for a long distance north of
Sandwich Bay many of the animals have mongrel blood in their veins.
They are smaller and inferior. But from Sandwich Bay southward the
difference is marked.

These southern dogs are faster, in a spurt of half a day or so, than
the big wolf dog, but they lack size and strength, and therefore the
staying powers that will carry them forward tirelessly day after day.
The strain of wolf in their blood often makes them vicious, but in
general they respond to kindly treatment and may be petted like dogs
the world over, and sometimes the natives make house dogs of their
leaders.

The dogs of Newfoundland, such as Doctor Grenfell uses in his winter
journeys in going out from St. Anthony to visit patients, are still a
different type. These are usually big lop-eared kindly fellows, and
just as friendly as any dog in the world. The laws of Newfoundland
provide a heavy fine upon any one bringing upon the island a Labrador
dog that is related even remotely to the husky wolf dog.

The leader of the dog team is the best disciplined dog in the team but
not always by any means the "boss" dog, or bully, of the pack. Every
pack has its bully and generally, also, its under dog that all the
others pick upon. Eskimo dogs fight among themselves, but the packs
hold together as a gang against strange packs, and when sledges meet
each other on the trail the drivers must exert their utmost effort and
caution, and wield the whip freely, or there will be a fine mix-up,
resulting often in crippled animals.

The komatik or sledge used in dog travel is from ten to fourteen feet
in length, though in the far north I have seen them a full eighteen
feet long. In the extreme north of Labrador, where the largest ones
are found, they are but sixteen inches wide. Further south, in the
region where the mission hospitals are situated, from ten to twelve
feet is the usual length and about two feet the breadth.

In Alaska and the Northwest dogs are harnessed tandem, that is one in
front of another in a straight line. This is a white man's method, and
a fine method too when driving through timbered regions.

But in Labrador dog travel is usually on the naked coast and seldom in
timbered country, and here the old Eskimo method is used. Each dog has
its individual trace, which is fastened to the end of a single line
of walrus skin leading from the komatik and called the bridle. The
leading dog, which is especially trained to answer the driver's
direction, has the longest trace, the next two dogs nearer the komatik
shorter ones, the next two still shorter, and so on. Thus, when they
travel the leader is in advance with the pack spread out behind him on
either side, fan-shaped. Dogs follow the leader like a pack of wolves.

When the driver wishes the dogs to go forward he shouts "oo-isht," and
to hurry "oksuit."[E] If he wishes them to turn to the right he calls
"ouk!", to the left "rah-der!", and to stop "Ah!"

In Newfoundland "Hist!" means "Go on"; "Keep off!" "to the right";
"Hold on!" "to the left." The dogs are harnessed in a similar manner
to that used in Labrador, and the sledges are of the same form, though
of the widest type.

When the dogs are put in harness in preparation for a journey they are
always keen for the start. They will leap and howl in eagerness to be
off unless the menace of a whip compels them to lie down. When the
driver is ready he shouts "oo-isht!" to the dogs, as he pulls the nose
of the komatik sharply to one side to "break" it loose from the snow.
Immediately the dogs are away at a mad gallop, with the komatik
swinging wildly from side to side. Quickly enough the animals settle
down to a slow pace, only to spurt if game is scented or on
approaching a building.

The usual dog whip is thirty or thirty-five feet in length, though I
have seen them nearly fifty feet long. Eskimo drivers are exceedingly
expert in handling the long whip, and in the hands of a cruel driver
it is an instrument of torture. In southeastern and southern Labrador
and in Newfoundland the dog whip is used much less freely than in the
north, and the people are less expert in its manipulation than are the
Eskimos. The different species of dogs renders the use of the whip
less necessary.

Dog travel is seldom over smooth unobstructed ice fields. Sometimes it
is over frozen bays where the tide has thrown up rough hummocks and
ridges. I have been, under such conditions, nearly half a day crossing
the mouth of a river one mile wide. Often the trail leads over high
hills, with long hard steep climbs to be made and sometimes dangerous
descents. In traveling over sea ice, especially in the late winter and
spring, and always when an off shore wind prevails, there is danger of
encountering bad ice, and breaking through, or having the ice "go
abroad," and cutting you off from shore. When the tide has smashed the
ice, it is often necessary to drive the team on the "ballicaders," or
ice barricade, a narrow strip of ice clinging to the rocky shore. This
is sometimes scarce wide enough for the komatik, and the greatest
skill is necessary on the part of the driver to keep the komatik from
slipping off the ballicader and falling and pulling the dogs into the
sea.

When the snow is soft some one on snowshoes must go in advance of the
dogs and pack the trail for them. Where traveling is rough, and in
up-hill work, it is more than often necessary to pull with the dogs,
and lift the komatik over obstructions.

In descending steep slopes the driver has a thick hoop of woven walrus
hide, which he throws over the nose of one of the runners to serve as
a drag. Even then, the descent may be rapid and exciting, and not a
little dangerous for dogs and men. The driver throws himself on his
side on the komatik clinging to it with both hands. His legs extend
forward at the side of the sledge, he sticks his heels into the snow
ahead to retard the progress, in imminent danger of a broken leg.

Winter settles early in Labrador and northern Newfoundland. Snow
comes, the sea smokes, and then one morning men wake up to find a
field of ice where waves were lapping the day before and where boats
have sailed all summer.

Then it is that Doctor Grenfell sets out with his dogs and komatik
over the great silent snow waste to visit his far scattered patients.
Adventures meet him at every turn and some exciting experiences he has
had, as we shall see.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Afternoon is referred to as "evening" by Labradormen.

[E] In Alaska they say "Mush," but this is never heard in Labrador.




XVIII

FACING AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD


The leader of Doctor Grenfell's dog team at St. Anthony, Newfoundland,
is Gypsy, a big black and white fellow, friendly as ever a good dog
can be, and trained to a nicety, always obedient and prompt in
responding to the driver's commands. Running next behind Gypsy, and
pulling side by side, are Tiger and Spider. Tiger is a large,
good-natured red and white fellow, and Spider, his brother, is black
and white. The next is Spot, a great white fellow with a black spot on
his neck, which gives him his name. His mate in harness is a tawny
yellow dog called Scotty. Then come Rover and Shaver. Rover is a
small, black, lop-eared dog, about half the size of Shaver, who looks
upon Rover as an inconsequent attachment, and though he thinks that
Rover is of small assistance, he takes upon himself the responsibility
of making this little working mate of his keep busy when in harness.
Tad and Eric, the rear dogs, are the largest and heaviest of the pack,
and perhaps the best haulers. Their traces are never slack, and they
attend strictly to business.

This is the team that hauls Doctor Grenfell in long winter journeys,
when he visits the coast settlements of northern Newfoundland, in
every one of which he finds no end of eager folk welcoming him and
calling him to their homes to heal their sick.

In the scattered hamlets and sparsely settled coast of northern
Newfoundland the folk have no doctor to call upon at a moment's notice
when they are sick, as we have. They live apart and isolated from many
of the conveniences of life that we look upon as necessities.

It was this condition that led Doctor Grenfell to build his fine
mission hospital at St. Anthony, and from St. Anthony, to brave the
bitter storms of winter, traveling over hundreds of miles of dreary
frozen storm-swept sea and land to help the needy, often to save life.
He never charges a fee, but the Newfoundlander is independent and
self-respecting, and when he is able to do so he pays. All that comes
to Doctor Grenfell in this way he gives to the mission to help support
the hospitals. Those who cannot pay receive from him and his
assistants the same skilled and careful treatment as those who do pay.
Money makes no difference. Doctor Grenfell is giving his life to the
people because they need him, and he never keeps for his own use any
part of the small fees paid him. He is never so happy as when he is
helping others, and to help others who are in trouble is his one great
object in life.

Two or three years ago the Newfoundland Government extended a
telegraph line to St. Anthony. This offers the people an opportunity
to call upon Doctor Grenfell when they are in need of him, though
sometimes they live so far away that in the storms of winter and
uncertainty of dog travel several days may pass before he can reach
the sick ones in answer to the calls. But let the weather be what it
may, he always responds, for there is no other doctor than Doctor
Grenfell and his assistant, the surgeon at St. Anthony Hospital,
within several hundred miles, north and west of St. Anthony.

Late one January afternoon in 1919 such a telegram came from a young
fisherman living at Cape Norman, urging Doctor Grenfell to come to his
home at once, and stating that the fisherman's wife was seriously ill.
Grenfell's assistant had taken the dog team the previous day to answer
a call, and had not returned, and if he were to go before his
assistant's return there would be no doctor at the hospital. He
therefore answered the man, stating these facts. During the evening
another wire was received urging him to find a team somewhere and come
at all costs.

It was evidently indeed a serious case. Cape Norman lies thirty miles
to the northward of St. Anthony, and the trail is a rough one. The
night was moonless and pitchy black, but Grenfell set out at once to
look for dogs. He borrowed four from one man, hired one from another,
and arranged with a man, named Walter, to furnish four additional
ones and to drive the team. Walter was to report at the hospital at
4:30 in the morning prepared to start, though it would still be long
before daybreak.

Having made these arrangements Grenfell went back to the hospital and
with the head nurse called upon every patient in the wards, providing
so far as possible for any contingency that might arise during his
absence. It was midnight when he had finished. Snow had set in, and
the wind was rising with the promise of bad weather ahead.

At 4:30 he was dressed and ready for the journey. He looked out into
the darkness. The air was thick with swirling clouds of snow driven
before a gale. He made out a dim figure battling its way to the door,
and as the figure approached he discovered it was Walter, but without
the dogs.

"Where are the dogs, Walter?" he asked.

"I didn't bring un, sir," Walter stepped inside and shook the
accumulation of snow from his garments. "'Tis a wonderful nasty
mornin', and I'm thinkin' 'tis too bad to try un before daylight. I've
been watchin' the weather all night, sir. 'Tis growin' worse. We has
only a scratch team and the dog'll not work together right 'till they
gets used to each other. I'm thinkin' we'll have to wait 'till it
comes light."

"You've the team to drive and you know best," conceded the Doctor.
"Under the circumstances I suppose we'll save time by waiting."

"That we will, sir. We'd be wastin' the dogs' strength and ours and
losin' time goin' now. We couldn't get on at all, sir."

"Very well; at daylight."

Walter returned home and Doctor Grenfell to his room to make the most
of the two hours' rest.

It was scarce daylight and Walter had not yet appeared when another
telegram was clicked in over the wires:

"Come along soon. Wife worse."

The storm had increased in fury since Walter's early visit. It was now
blowing a living gale, and the snow was so thick one could scarce
breathe in it. The trail lay directly in the teeth of the storm. No
dogs on earth could face and stem it and certainly not the picked up,
or "scratch" team as Walter called it, for strange dogs never work
well together, and will never do their best by any means for a strange
driver, and Walter had never driven any of these except his own four.

With visions of the suffering woman whose life might depend upon his
presence, the Doctor chafed the forenoon through. Then at midday came
another telegram:

"Come immediately if you can. Wife still holding out."

He had but just read this telegram when, to his astonishment, two
snow-enveloped, bedraggled men limped up to the door.

"Where did you come from in this storm?" he asked, hardly believing
his eyes that men could travel in that drift and gale.

"We comes from Cape Norman, sir, to fetch you," answered one of the
men.

"Fetch me!" exclaimed the Doctor. "Do you believe dogs can travel
against this gale?"

"No, sir, they never could stem it, not 'till the wind shifts,
whatever," said the man. "Us comes with un drivin' from behind. The
gale blows us here."

That was literally true. Ten miles of their journey had been over
partially protected land, but for twenty miles it lay over
unobstructed sea ice where the gale blew with all its force. Only the
deep snow prevented them being carried at a pace that would have
wrecked their sledge, in which case they would certainly have
perished.

"When did you leave Cape Norman?" asked the Doctor.

"Eight o'clock last evenin', sir," said the man.

All night these brave men, with no thought of reward, had been
enduring that terrible storm to bring assistance to a neighbor! After
the manner of the Newfoundlanders they had already fed and cared for
the comfort of their wearied dogs, before giving thought to
themselves, staggering with fatigue as they were.

"Go into the hospital and get your dinner," directed the Doctor. "When
you've eaten, go to bed. We'll call you when we think it's safe to
start."

"Thank you, sir," and the grateful men left for the hospital kitchen.

It was after dark that evening when the two men again appeared at
Doctor Grenfell's house. They were troubled for the safety of their
neighbor's sick wife, and could not rest.

"Us were just gettin' another telegram sayin' to hurry, sir,"
announced the spokesman. "The storm has eased up a bit, and we're
thinkin' to make a try for un if you're ready."

"Call Walter, and I'll be right with you," directed the Doctor.

"Us has been and called he, sir," said the man. "He's gettin' the dogs
together and he'll be right here."

A lull in a winter storm in this north country, with the clouds still
hanging low and no change of wind, does not promise the end of the
storm. It indicates that this is the center, that it is working in a
circle and will soon break upon the world again with even increased
fury.

Doctor Grenfell knew this and the men knew it full well, but their
anxiety for the suffering woman at Cape Norman would not permit them
to sleep. Anything was better than sitting still. The decision to
start was a source of vast relief to Doctor Grenfell, even though it
were to venture into the face of the terrible storm and bitter cold.
Grenfell will venture anything with any man, and if those men could
face the wind and snow and cold he could.

In half an hour they were off. Before them lay the harbor of St.
Anthony, and the ice must be crossed. Through the darkness of night
and swirling snow they floundered down to it. The men were immediately
knee-deep in slush and the two teams of dogs were nearly swimming.
Their feet could not reach the solid bed of ice below. The immense
weight of snow had pushed the ice down with the falling tide and the
rising tide had flooded it.

The team from Cape Norman took the lead to break the way. Every one
put on his snowshoes, for traveling without them was impossible. One
of those with the advance team went ahead of the dogs to tramp the
path for the sledge and make the work easier for the poor animals,
while the other remained with the team to drive. In like manner Walter
tramped ahead of the rear dogs and Doctor Grenfell drove them.

At length they reached the opposite shore, fighting against the gale
at every step. Now there was a hill to cross.

Here on the lee side of the hill they met mighty drifts of feathery
snow into which the dogs wallowed to their backs and the snowshoes of
the men sunk deep. They were compelled to haul on the traces with the
dogs. They had to lift and manipulate the sledges with tremendous
effort. Up the grade they toiled and strained, yard by yard, foot by
foot. Sometimes it seemed to them they were making no appreciable
progress, but on they fought through the black night and the driving
snow, sweating in spite of the Arctic blasts and clouds of drift that
sometimes nearly stopped their breath and carried them off their feet.

The life of the young fisherman's wife at Cape Norman hung in the
balance. The toiling men visualized her lying on a bed of pain and
perhaps dying for the need of a doctor. They saw the agonized husband
by her side, tortured by his helplessness to save her. They forgot
themselves and the risk they were taking in their desire to bring to
the fisherman's wife the help her husband was beseeching God to send.
This is true heroism.

As the saying on the coast goes, "'tis dogged as does it," and as
Grenfell himself says, "not inspiration, but perspiration wins the
prizes of life." They finally reached the crest of the hill.

On the opposite or weather side of the hill the gale met them with
full force. It had swept the slope clean and left it a glade of ice.
They slid down at a dangerous speed, taking all sorts of chances,
colliding in the darkness with stumps and ice-coated rocks and other
snags, in imminent danger of having their brains knocked out or limbs
broken.

The open places below were little better. Everything was ice-coated.
They slipped and slid about, falling and rising with every dozen
steps. If they threw themselves on the sledges to ride the dogs came
to a stop, for they could not haul them. If they walked they could not
keep their feet. Their course took them along the bed of Bartlett
River, and twice Grenfell and some of the others broke through into
the icy rapids.

At half past one in the morning they reached the mouth of Bartlett
River where it empties into the sea and between them and Cape Norman
lay twenty miles of unobstructed sea ice. They had been traveling for
nearly six hours and had covered but ten miles of the journey. The
temporary lull in the storm had long since passed, and now, beating
down upon the world with redoubled fury, it met them squarely in the
face. No dog could stem it. The men could scarce stand upright. The
clouds of snow suffocated them, and the cold was withering.

Far out they could hear the thunder of smashing ice. It was a threat
that the still firm ice lying before them might be broken into
fragments at any time. Sea water had already driven over it, forming a
thick coating of half-frozen slush. Even though the gale that swept
the ice field had not been too fierce to face, any attempt to cross
would obviously have been a foolhardy undertaking.




XIX

HOW AMBROSE WAS MADE TO WALK


One of the men from Cape Norman had been acting as leader on the trail
from St. Anthony. His name was Will, and he was a big broad-shouldered
man, a giant of a fellow. He knew all the trappers on this part of the
coast, and where their trapping grounds lay. One of his neighbors,
whom he spoke of as "Si," trapped in the neighborhood where the
baffled men now found themselves.

"I'm rememberin', now, Si built a tilt handy by here," he suddenly
exclaimed.

"A tilt!" Grenfell was sceptical. "I've been going up and down this
coast for twenty years and I never heard of a tilt near here."

"He built un last fall. I thinks, now, I could find un," Will
suggested.

"Find it if you can," urged Grenfell hopefully. "Where is it?"

"'Tis in a bunch of trees, somewheres handy."

"Is there a stove in it?"

"I'm not knowin' that. I'll try to find un and see."

They had retreated to the edge of the forest. Will disappeared among
the trees, and Grenfell and the others waited. It was still six hours
to daylight, and to stand inactive for six hours in the storm and
biting cold would have been perilous if not fatal.

Presently Will's shout came out of the forest, rising above the road
of wind:

"Ti-l-t and St-o-ve!"

They followed Will's voice, bumping against trees, groping through
flying snow and darkness, and quickly came upon Will and the tilt.
There was indeed, to their great joy, a stove in it. There was also a
supply of dry wood, all cut and piled ready for use. In one end of the
tilt was a bench covered with spruce boughs which Si used as a bed.

There was nothing to feed the exhausted dogs, but they were
unharnessed and were glad enough to curl up in the snow, where the
drift would cover them, after the manner of northern dogs.

Then a fire was lighted in the stove. Will went out with the ax and
kettle, and presently returned with the kettle filled with water
dipped from Bartlett River after he had cut a hole through the ice.

Setting the kettle on the stove, Will, standing by the stove,
proceeded to fill and light his pipe while Doctor Grenfell opened his
dunnage bag to get the tea and sugar. Suddenly Will's pipe clattered
to the floor. Will, standing like a statue, did not stoop to pick it
up and Grenfell rescued it and rising offered it to him, when, to his
vast astonishment, he discovered that the man, standing erect upon
his feet was fast asleep. He had been nearly sixty hours without sleep
and forty-eight hours of this had been spent on the trail.

They aroused Will and had him sit down on the bench. He re-lighted his
pipe but in a moment it fell from his teeth again. He rolled over on
the bench and was too soundly asleep to be interested in pipe or tea
or anything to eat.

Daylight brought no abatement in the storm. The ice was deep under a
coating of slush, and quite impassable for dogs and men, and the sea
was pounding and battering at the outer edge, as the roar of smashing
ice testified, though quite shut out from view by driving snow. There
was nothing to do but follow the shore, a long way around, and off
they started.

Here and there was an opportunity to cut across small coves and inlets
where the ice was safe enough, and at two o'clock in the afternoon
they reached Crow Island, a small island three-quarters of a mile from
the mainland.

Under the shelter of scraggly fir trees on Crow Island an attempt was
made to light a fire and boil the kettle for tea. But there was no
protection from the blizzard. They failed to get the fire, and finally
compelled by the elements to give it up they took a compass course for
a small settlement on the mainland. The instinct of the dogs led them
straight, and when the men had almost despaired of locating the
settlement they suddenly drew up before a snug cottage.

A cup of steaming tea, a bit to eat, and Grenfell and his men were off
again. Cape Norman was not far away, and that evening they reached the
fisherman's home.

The joy and thankfulness of the young fisherman was beyond bounds. His
wife was in agony and in a critical condition. Doctor Grenfell
relieved her pain at once, and by skillful treatment in due time
restored her to health. Had he hesitated to face the storm or had he
been made of less heroic stuff and permitted himself to be driven back
by the blizzard, she would have died. Indeed there are few men on the
coast that would have ventured out in that storm. But he went and he
saved the woman's life, and today that young fisherman's wife is as
well and happy as ever she could be, and she and her husband will
forever be grateful to Doctor Grenfell for his heroic struggle to
reach them.

In a few days Doctor Grenfell was back again in St. Anthony, and then
a telegram came calling him to a village to the south. The weather was
fair. His own splendid team was at home, and he was going through a
region where settlements were closer together than on the Cape Norman
trail.

The first night was spent in his sleeping bag stretched on the floor
of a small building kept open for the convenience of travelers with
dog sledges. The next night he was comfortably housed in a little
cabin in the woods, also used for the convenience of travelers, and
generally each night he was quite as well housed.

He was going now to see a lad of fifteen whose thigh had been broken
while steering a komatik down a steep hill. Dog driving, as we have
seen, is frequently a dangerous occupation, and this young fellow had
suffered.

In every settlement Doctor Grenfell was hailed by folk who needed a
doctor. There was one broken leg that required attention, one man had
a broken knee cap. In one house he found a young woman dying of
consumption. There were many cases of Spanish influenza and several
people dangerously ill with bronchial pneumonia. There was one little
blind child later taken to the hospital at St. Anthony to undergo an
operation to restore her sight. In the course of that single journey
he treated eighty-six different cases, and but for his fortunate
coming none of them could have had a doctor's care.

He found the lad Ambrose suffering intense pain. After his accident
the lad had been carried home by a friend. His people did not know
that the thigh was broken, and when it swelled they rubbed and
bandaged it.

The pain grew almost too great for the boy to bear. A priest passing
through the settlement advised them to put the leg in splints. This
was done, but no padding was used, which, as every Boy Scout knows,
was a serious omission. Boards were used as splints, extending from
thigh to heel and they cut into the flesh, causing painful sores.

The priest had gone, and though Ambrose was suffering so intensely
that he could not sleep at night no one dared remove the splints. The
neighbors declared the lad's suffering was caused by the pain from the
injured thigh coming out at the heel.

Ambrose was in a terrible condition when Doctor Grenfell arrived. The
pain had been continuous and for a long time he had not slept. The
broken thigh had knit in a bowed position, leaving that leg three
inches shorter than the other.

It was necessary to re-break the thigh to straighten it. Doctor
Grenfell could not do this without assistance. There was but one thing
to do, take the lad to St. Anthony hospital.

A special team and komatik would be required for the journey, but the
lad's father had no dogs, and with a family of ten children to
support, in addition to Ambrose, no money with which to hire one. A
friend came to the rescue and volunteered to haul the lad to the
hospital.

It was a journey of sixty miles. The trail from the village where
Ambrose lived rose over a high range of hills. The snow was deep and
the traveling hard, and several men turned out to help the dogs haul
the komatik to the summit. Then, with Doctor Grenfell's sledge ahead
to break the trail, and the other following with the helpless lad
packed in a box they set out, Ambrose's father on snowshoes walking by
the side of the komatik to offer his boy any assistance the lad might
need.

The next morning Doctor Grenfell was delayed with patients and the
other komatik went ahead, only to be lost and to finally turn back on
the trail until they met Grenfell's komatik, which was searching for
them.

The cold was bitter and terrible that day. The men on snowshoes were
comfortable enough with their hard exercise, but it was almost
impossible to keep poor Ambrose from freezing in spite of heavy
covering. Now and again his father had to remove the moccasins from
Ambrose's feet and rub them briskly with bare hands to restore
circulation. He even removed the warm mittens from his own hands and
gave them to Ambrose to pull on over the ones he already wore.

At midday a halt was made to "boil the kettle," and by the side of the
big fire that was built in the shelter of the forest Ambrose was
restored to comparative comfort. On the trail again it was colder than
ever in the afternoon, and they thought the lad, though he never once
uttered a complaint, would freeze before they could reach the cabin
that was to shelter them for the night. At last the cabin was reached.
A fire was hurriedly built in the stove, and with much rubbing of
hands and legs and feet, and a roaring fire, he was made so
comfortable that he could eat, and a fine supper they had for him.

At the place where they stopped the previous night Doctor Grenfell had
mentioned that the oven that sat on the stove in this cabin, was worn
out. One of the men immediately went out, procured some corrugated
iron, pounded it flat with the back of an ax and then proceeded to
make an oven for Grenfell to take with him on his komatik. Upon
opening the oven now it was found that the good friend who had made
the oven had packed it full of rabbits and ptarmigans, the white
partridge or grouse of the north. In a little while a delicious stew
was sending forth its appetizing odors. A pan of nicely browned hot
biscuits, freshly baked in the new oven and a kettle of steaming tea
completed a feast that would have tempted anyone's appetite, and
Ambrose, for the first time in many a day relieved of much of his
pain, through Doctor Grenfell's ministrations, enjoyed it immensely,
and for the first time in many a night, followed his meal with
refreshing sleep.

The next morning the cold was more intense than ever. Ambrose was
wrapped in every blanket they had and, as additional protection,
Doctor Grenfell stowed him away in his own sleeping bag, and packed
him on the sledge. Off they went on the trail again. Late that
afternoon they crossed a big bay, and St. Anthony was but eighteen
mile away.

When Ambrose was made comfortable in a settler's cottage, Doctor
Grenfell directed that he was to be brought on to the hospital the
following morning, and he himself much needed at the hospital pushed
forward at once, arriving at St. Anthony long after night.

But before morning the worst storm of the winter broke upon them. The
buildings at St. Anthony rocked in the gale until the maids on the top
floor of the hospital said they were seasick. And when the storm was
over the snow was so deep that men with snowshoes walked from the
gigantic snow banks to some of the roofs which were on a level with
the drifts. Tunnels had to be cut through the snow to doors.

The storm delayed Ambrose and his friends, but after the weather
cleared their komatik appeared. The lad was put on the operating
table, the thigh re-broken and properly set by Doctor Grenfell, and
the leg brought down to its proper length. Presently the time came
when Grenfell was able to tell the father that, after all their fears,
Ambrose was not to be a cripple and that he would be as strong and
nimble as ever he was. This was actually the case. Doctor Grenfell is
a remarkably skillful surgeon and he had wrought a miracle. The
thankful and relieved father shed tears of joy.

"When I gets un," said he, his voice choked by emotion, "I'll send
five dollars for the hospital."

Five dollars, to Ambrose's father, was a lot of money.

Winter storms, as we have seen, never hold Doctor Grenfell back when
he is called to the sick and injured. Many times he has broken through
the sea ice, and many times he has narrowly escaped death. The story
of a few of these experiences would fill a volume of rattling fine
adventure. I am tempted to go on with them. One of these big
adventures at least we must not pass by. As we shall see in the next
chapter, it came dangerously near being his last one.




XX

LOST ON THE ICE FLOE


One day in April several years ago, Dr. Grenfell, who was at the time
at St. Anthony Hospital, received an urgent call to visit a sick man
two days' journey with dogs to the southward. The patient was
dangerously ill. No time was to be lost, for delay might cost the
man's life.

It is still winter in northern Newfoundland in April, though the days
are growing long and at midday the sun, climbing high now in the
heavens, sends forth a genial warmth that softens the snow. At this
season winds spring up suddenly and unexpectedly, and blow with
tremendous velocity. Sometimes the winds are accompanied by squalls of
rain or snow, with a sudden fall in temperature, and an off-shore wind
is quite certain to break up the ice that has covered the bays all
winter, and to send it abroad in pans upon the wide Atlantic, to melt
presently and disappear.

This breaking up of the ice sometimes comes so suddenly that traveling
with dogs upon the frozen bays at this season is a hazardous
undertaking. Scarcely a year passes that some one is not lost.
Sometimes men are carried far to sea on ice pans and are never heard
from again.

A man must know the trails to travel with dogs along this rough coast.
Much better progress is made traveling upon sea ice than on land
trails, for the latter are usually up and down over rocky hills and
through entangling brush and forest, while the former is a smooth
straight-away course. When the ice is rotted by the sun's heat,
however, and is covered by deep slush, and is broken by dangerous
holes and open leads that cannot safely be crossed, the driver keeps
close to shore, and is sometimes forced to turn to the land and leave
the ice altogether. When the ice is good and sound the dog traveler
only leaves it to cross necks of land separating bays and inlets,
where distance may be shortened, and makes as straight a course across
the frozen bays as possible.

There is a great temptation always, even when the ice is in poor
condition, to cross it and "take a chance," which usually means a
considerable risk, rather than travel the long course around shore.
Long experience at dog travel, instead of breeding greater caution in
the men of the coast, leads them to take risks from which the less
experienced man would shrink.

These were the conditions when the call came that April day to Dr.
Grenfell. Traveling at this season was, at best, attended by risk. But
this man's life depended upon his going, and no risk could be
permitted to stand in the way of duty. Without delay he packed his
komatik box with medicines, bandages and instruments. It was certain
he would have many calls, both for medical and surgical attention,
from the scattered cottages he should pass, and on these expeditions
he always travels fully prepared to meet any ordinary emergency from
administering pills to amputating a leg or an arm. He also packed in
the box a supply of provisions and his usual cooking kit.

Only in cases of stress do men take long journeys with dogs alone, but
there was no man about the hospital at this time that Grenfell could
take with him as a traveling companion and to assist him, and no time
to wait for any one, and so, quite alone and driving his own team, he
set out upon his journey.

It was mid-afternoon when he "broke" his komatik loose, and his dogs,
eager for the journey, turned down upon the trail at a run. The dogs
were fresh and in the pink of condition, and many miles were behind
him when he halted his team at dusk before a fisherman's cottage. Here
he spent the night, and the following morning, bright and early,
harnessed his dogs and was again hurrying forward.

The morning was fine and snappy. The snow, frozen and crisp, gave the
dogs good footing. The komatik slid freely over the surface. Dr.
Grenfell urged the animals forward that they might take all the
advantage possible of the good sledging before the heat of the midday
sun should soften the snow and make the hauling hard.

The fisherman's cottage where he had spent the night was on the shores
of a deep inlet, and a few rods beyond the cottage the trail turned
down upon the inlet ice, and here took a straight course across the
ice to the opposite shore, some five miles distant, where it plunged
into the forest to cross another neck of land.

A light breeze was coming in from the sea, the ice had every
appearance of being solid and secure, and Dr. Grenfell dove out upon
it for a straight line across. To have followed the shore would have
increased the distance to nearly thirty miles.

Everything went well until perhaps half the distance had been covered.
Then suddenly there came a shift of wind, and Grenfell discovered,
with some apprehension, that a stiff breeze was rising, and now
blowing from land toward the sea, instead of from the sea toward the
land as it had done when he started early in the morning from the
fisherman's cottage. Still the ice was firm enough, and in any case
there was no advantage to be had by turning back, for he was as near
one shore as the other.

Already the surface of the ice, which, with several warm days, had
become more or less porous and rotten, was covered with deep slush.
The western sky was now blackened by heavy wind clouds, and with
scarce any warning the breeze developed into a gale. Forcing his dogs
forward at their best pace, while he ran by the side of the komatik,
he soon put another mile behind him. Before him the shore loomed up,
and did not seem far away. But every minute counted. It was evident
the ice could not stand the strain of the wind much longer.

Presently one of Grenfell's feet went through where slush covered an
opening crack. He shouted at the dogs, but, buffeted by wind and
floundering through slush, they could travel no faster though they
made every effort to do so, for they, no less perhaps than their
master, realized the danger that threatened them.

Then, suddenly, the ice went asunder, not in large pans as it would
have done earlier in the winter when it was stout and hard, but in a
mass of small pieces, with only now and again a small pan.

Grenfell and the dogs found themselves floundering in a sea of slush
ice that would not bear their weight. The faithful dogs had done their
best, but their best had not been good enough. With super-human effort
Grenfell managed to cut their traces and set them free from the
komatik, which was pulling them down. Even now, with his own life in
the gravest peril, he thought of them.

When the dogs were freed, Grenfell succeeded in clambering upon a
small ice pan that was scarce large enough to bear his weight, and
for the moment was safe. But the poor dogs, much more frightened than
their master, and looking to him for protection, climbed upon the pan
with him, and with this added weight it sank from under him.

Swimming in the ice-clogged water must have been well nigh impossible.
The shock of the ice-cold water itself, even had there been no ice,
was enough to paralyze a man. But Grenfell, accustomed to cold, and
with nerves of iron as a result of keeping his body always in the pink
of physical condition, succeeded finally in reaching a pan that would
support both himself and the dogs. The animals followed him and took
refuge at his feet.

Standing upon the pan, with the dogs huddled about him, he scanned the
naked shores, but no man or sign of human life was to be seen. How
long his own pan would hold together was a question, for the broken
ice, grinding against it, would steadily eat it away.

There was a steady drift of the ice toward the open sea. The wind was
bitterly cold. There was nothing to eat for himself and nothing to
feed the dogs, for the loaded komatik had long since disappeared
beneath the surface of the sea.

Exposed to the frigid wind, wet to the skin, and with no other
protection than the clothes upon his back, it seemed inevitable that
the cold would presently benumb him and that he would perish from it
even though his pan withstood the wearing effects of the water. The
pan was too small to admit of sufficient exercise to keep up the
circulation of blood, and though he slapped his arms around his
shoulders and stamped his feet, a deadening numbness was crawling over
him as the sun began to sink in the west and cold increased.

Though, in the end he might drown, Grenfell determined to live as long
as he could. Perhaps this was a test of courage that God had given
him! It is a man's duty, whatever befalls him, to fight for life to
the last ditch, and live as long as he can. Most men, placed as
Grenfell was placed, would have sunk down in despair, and said: "It's
all over! I've done the best I could!" And there they would have
waited for death to find them. When a man is driven to the wall, as
Grenfell was, it is easier to die than live. When God brings a man
face to face with death, He robs death of all its terrors, and when
that time comes it is no harder for a man who has lived right with God
to die than it is for him to lie down at night and sleep. But Grenfell
was never a quitter. He was going to fight it out now with the
elements as best he could with what he had at hand.

These northern dogs, when driven to desperation by hunger, will turn
upon their best friend and master, and here was another danger. If he
and the dogs survived the night and another day, what would the dogs
do? Then it would be, as Grenfell knew full well, his life or theirs.

The dogs wore good warm coats of fur, and if he had a coat made of dog
skins it would keep him warm enough to protect his life, at least,
from the cold. Now the animals were docile enough. Clustered about his
feet, they were looking up into his face expectantly and confidently.
He loved them as a good man always loves the beasts that serve him.
They had hauled him over many a weary mile of snow and ice, and had
been his companions and shared with him the hardships of many a
winter's storm.

But it was his life or theirs. If he were to survive the night, some
of the dogs must be sacrificed. In all probability he and they would
be drowned anyway before another night fell upon the world.

There was no time to be lost in vain regrets and indecision. Grenfell
drew his sheath knife, and as hard as we know it was for him,
slaughtered three of the animals. This done, he removed their pelts,
and wrapping the skins about him, huddled down among the living dogs
for a night of long, tedious hours of waiting and uncertainty, until
another day should break.

That must have been a period of terrible suffering for Grenfell, but
he had a stout heart and he survived it. He has said that the dog
skins saved his life, and without them he certainly would have
perished.

The ice pan still held together, and with a new day came fresh hope of
the possibility of rescue. The coast was still well in sight, and
there was a chance that a change of wind might drive the pan toward it
on an incoming tide. At this season, too, the men of the coast were
out scanning the sea for "signs" of seals, and some of them might see
him.

This thought suggested that if he could erect a signal on a pole, it
would attract attention more readily. He had no pole, and he thought
at first no means of raising the signal, which was, indeed, necessary,
for at that distance from shore only a moving signal would be likely
to attract the attention of even the keenly observant fishermen.

Then his eyes fell upon the carcasses of the three dogs with their
stiff legs sticking up. He drew his sheath knife and went at them
immediately. In a little while he had severed the legs from the bodies
and stripped the flesh from the bones. Now with pieces of dog harness
he lashed the legs together, and presently had a serviceable pole, but
one which must have been far from straight.

Elated with the result of his experiment, he hastily stripped the
shirt from his back, fastened it to one end of his staff, and raising
it over his head began moving it back and forth.

It was an ingenious idea to make a flagstaff from the bones of dogs'
legs. Hardly one man in a thousand would have thought of it. It was an
exemplification of Grenfell's resourcefulness, and in the end it saved
his life.

As he had hoped, men were out upon the rocky bluffs scanning the sea
for seals. The keen eyes of one of them discovered, far away,
something dark and unusual. The men of this land never take anything
for granted. It is a part of the training of the woodsman and seaman
to identify any unusual movement or object, or to trace any unusual
sound, before he is satisfied to let it pass unheeded. Centering his
attention upon the distant object the man distinguished a movement
back and forth. Nothing but a man could make such a movement he knew,
and he also knew that any man out there was in grave danger. He called
some other fishermen, manned a boat and Dr. Grenfell and his surviving
dogs were rescued.




XXI

WRECKED AND ADRIFT


It happened that it was necessary for Dr. Grenfell to go to New York
one spring three or four years ago. Men interested in raising funds to
support the Labrador and Newfoundland hospitals were to hold a
meeting, and it was essential that he attend the meeting and tell them
of the work on the coast, and what he needed to carry it on.

This meeting was to have been held in May, and to reach New York in
season to attend it Dr. Grenfell decided to leave St. Anthony
Hospital, where he then was, toward the end of April, for in any case
traveling would be slow.

It was his plan to travel northward, by dog team, to the Straits of
Belle Isle, thence westward along the shores, and finally southward,
down the western coast of Newfoundland, to Port Aux Basque, from which
point a steamer would carry him over to North Sydney, in Nova Scotia.
There he could get a train and direct railway connections to New York.
There is an excellent, and ordinarily, at this season, an expeditious
route for dog travel down the western coast of Newfoundland, and
Grenfell anticipated no difficulties.

Just as he was ready to start a blizzard set in with a northeast gale,
and smash! went the ice. This put an end to dog travel. There was but
one alternative, and that was by boat. Traveling along the coast in a
small boat is pretty exciting and sometimes perilous when you have to
navigate the boat through narrow lanes of water, with land ice on one
side and the big Arctic ice pack on the other, and a shift of wind is
likely to send the pack driving in upon you before you can get out of
the way. And if the ice pack catches you, that's the end of it, for
your boat will be ground up like a grain of wheat between mill stones,
and there you are, stranded upon the ice, and as like as not cut off
from land, too.

But there was no other way to get to that meeting in New York, and
Grenfell was determined to get there. And so, when the blizzard had
passed he got out a small motor boat, and made ready for the journey.
If he could reach a point several days' journey by boat to the
southward, he could leave the boat and travel one hundred miles on
foot overland to the railroad.

This hike of one hundred miles, with provisions and equipment on his
back, was a tremendous journey in itself. It would not be on a beaten
road, but through an unpopulated wilderness still lying deep under
winter snows. To Grenfell, however, it would be but an incident in his
active life. He was accustomed to following a dog team, and that
hardens a man for nearly any physical effort. It requires that a man
keep at a trot the livelong day, and it demands a good heart and good
lungs and staying powers and plenty of grit, and Grenfell was well
equipped with all of these.

The menacing Arctic ice pack lay a mile or so seaward when Grenfell
and one companion turned their backs on St. Anthony, and the motor
boat chugged southward, out of the harbor and along the coast. For a
time all went well, and then an easterly wind sprang up and there
followed a touch-and-go game between Dr. Grenfell and the ice.

In an attempt to dodge the ice the boat struck upon rocks. This caused
some damage to her bottom, but not sufficient to incapacitate her, as
it was found the hole could be plugged. The weather turned bitterly
cold, and the circulating pipes of the motor froze and burst. This was
a more serious accident, but it was temporarily repaired while
Grenfell bivouaced ashore, sleeping at night under the stars with a
bed of juniper boughs for a mattress and an open fire to keep him
warm.

Ice now blocked the way to the southward, though open leads of water
to the northward offered opportunity to retreat, and, with the motor
boat in a crippled condition, it was decided to return to St. Anthony
and make an attempt, with fresh equipment, to try a route through the
Straits of Belle Isle.

They were still some miles from St. Anthony when they found it
necessary to abandon the motor boat in one of the small harbor
settlements. Leaving it in charge of the people, Grenfell borrowed a
small rowboat. Rowing the small boat through open lanes and hauling it
over obstructing ice pans they made slow progress and the month of May
was nearing its close when one day the pack suddenly drove in upon
them.

They were fairly caught. Ice surrounded them on every side. The boat
was in imminent danger of being crushed before they realized their
danger. Grenfell and his companion sprang from the boat to a pan, and
seizing the prow of the boat hauled upon it with the energy of
desperation. They succeeded in raising the prow upon the ice, but they
were too late. The edge of the ice was high and the pans were moving
rapidly, and to their chagrin they heard a smashing and splintering of
wood, and the next instant were aware that the stern of the boat had
been completely bitten off and that they were adrift on an ice pan,
cut off from the land by open water.

An inspection of the boat proved that it was wrecked beyond repair.
All of the after part had been cut off and ground to pulp between the
ice pans. In the distance, to the westward, rose the coast, a grim
outline of rocky bluffs. Between them and the shore the sea was dotted
with pans and pieces of ice, separated by canals of black water. The
men looked at each other in consternation as they realized that they
had no means of reaching land and safety, and that a few hours might
find them far out on the Atlantic.

In the hope of attracting attention, Dr. Grenfell and William Taylor,
his companion, fired their guns at regular intervals. Expectantly they
waited, but there was no answering signal from shore and no sign of
life anywhere within their vision.

For a long while they waited and watched and signalled. With a turn in
the tide it became evident, finally, that the pan on which they were
marooned was drifting slowly seaward. If this continued they would
soon be out of sight of land, and then all hope of rescue would
vanish.

"I'll tell you what I'll do, now," suggested Taylor. "I'll copy toward
shore. I'll try to get close enough for some one to see me."

To "copy" is to jump from one pan or piece of ice to another. The gaps
of water separating them are sometimes wide, and a man must be a good
jumper who lands. Some of the pieces of ice are quite too small to
bear a man's weight, and he must leap instantly to the next or he will
sink with the ice. It is perilous work at best, and much too dangerous
for any one to attempt without much practice and experience.

They had a boat hook with them, and taking it to assist in the long
leaps, Taylor started shore-ward. Dr. Grenfell watched him anxiously
as he sprang from pan to pan making a zigzag course toward shore, now
and again taking hair-raising risks, sometimes resting for a moment on
a substantial pan while he looked ahead to select his route, then
running, and using the boat hook as a vaulting pole, spanning a wide
chasm. Then, suddenly, Dr. Grenfell saw him totter, throw up his hands
and disappear beneath the surface of the water. In a hazardous leap he
had missed his footing, or a small cake of ice had turned under his
weight.




XXII

SAVING A LIFE


It was a terrible moment for Grenfell when he saw his friend disappear
beneath the icy waves. Would the cold so paralyze him as to render him
helpless? Would he be caught under an ice pan? A hundred such thoughts
flashed through Grenfell's mind as he stood, impotent to help because
of the distance between them. Then to his great joy he saw Taylor rise
to the surface and scramble out upon a pan in safety.

The ice was too far separated now for Taylor either to advance or
retreat, and the pan upon which he had taken refuge began a rapid
drift seaward. He had made a valiant effort, but the attempt had
failed.

Grenfell resumed firing his gun, still hoping that some one might hear
it and come to their rescue. Time passed and Taylor drifted abreast of
Grenfell and finally drifted past him. Then, in the far distance,
Grenfell glimpsed the flash of an oar. The flash was repeated with
rhythmic regularity. The outlines of a boat came into view. The men
shouted the good news to each other. Help was coming!

The signals had been heard, and in due time, and with much
thankfulness, Dr. Grenfell and William Taylor were safely in the boat
and on their way to St. Anthony.

Not long after his return to St. Anthony, the ice drifted eastward and
an open strip of sea appeared leading northward toward the Straits of
Belle Isle. The ice was now a full mile off shore, it was the
beginning of June, and Dr. Grenfell, expecting that at this late
season the Straits would be open for navigation, had the _Strathcona_
made ready for sea at once, and with high hopes, stowed the anchor and
steamed northward. It was his plan to have the vessel carry him
westward through the Straits and land him at some port on the west
coast of Newfoundland where he could take passage on the regular mail
boat, which he had been advised had begun its summer service. Thence
he could continue his trip to New York, where the important meeting
had been adjourned several times in expectation of his coming.

But again he was doomed to disappointment. The Straits were found to
be packed from shore to shore with heavy floe ice and clogged with
icebergs. Before the _Strathcona_ could make her escape she was
surrounded by ice and frozen tight and fast into the floe.

[Illustration: "THE HOSPITAL SHIP. STRATHCONA"]

Grenfell was determined to reach New York and attend that meeting. It
was supremely important that he do so. Now there was but one way to
reach the mail boat, and that was to walk. The distance to the nearest
port of call was ninety miles.

Making up a pack of food, cooking utensils, bedding and a suit of
clothes that would permit him to present a civilized and respectable
appearance when he reached New York, he made ready for the long
overland journey. Shouldering his big pack, he bade goodbye to Mrs.
Grenfell, who was with him on the _Strathcona_, and to the crew, and
set out over the ice pack to the land.

Three days later Dr. Grenfell reached the harbor where he was to board
the mail boat upon her arrival. He was wearied and stiff in his joints
after the hard overland hike with a heavy pack on his back, and
looking forward to rest and a good meal, he went directly to the home
of a mission clergyman living in the little village.

His welcome was hearty, as a welcome always is on this coast. The
clergyman showered him with kindnesses. A pot of steaming tea and an
appetizing meal was on the table in a jiffy. It was luxury after the
long days on the trail and Grenfell sat down with anticipation of keen
enjoyment.

At the moment that Grenfell seated himself the door opened
unceremoniously, and an excited fisherman burst into the room with the
exclamation:

"For God's sake, some one come! Come and save my brother's life! He's
bleeding to death!"

Dr. Grenfell learned in a few hurried inquiries that the man's
brother had accidentally shot his leg nearly off an hour before and
was already in a comatose condition from loss of blood. The family
lived five miles distant, and the only way to reach the cabin where
the wounded man lay was on foot.

Grenfell forgot all about the steaming tea, the good meal and rest. A
moment's delay might cost the man his life. Grenfell ran. Over that
five miles of broken country he ran as he had never run before, with
the half-frenzied fisherman leading the way.

The wounded man was a young fellow of twenty. Dr. Grenfell knew him
well. He was a hero of the world war. He had volunteered when a mere
boy, served bravely through four years of the terrible conflict and
though he had taken part in many of the great battles he had lived to
return to his home and his fishing.

"I never knew a better cure for stiffness than a splendid chance for
serving," said Grenfell in referring to that run from the missionary's
home to the fisherman's cottage. All his stiff joints and weary
muscles were forgotten as he ran.

When Dr. Grenfell entered the room where the man lay, he found the
young fisherman soaked with blood and sea water, lying stretched upon
a hard table. The remnant of his shattered leg rested upon a feather
pillow and was strung up to the ceiling in an effort to stop the flow
of blood. He was moaning, but was practically unconscious, and barely
alive.

The room was crowded to suffocation with weeping relatives and
sympathetic neighbors. Dr. Grenfell cleared it at once. The place was
small and the light poor and a difficult place in which to treat so
critical a case or to operate successfully. He had no surgical
instruments or medicines, and even for him, accustomed as he was to
work under handicaps and difficulties, a serious problem confronted
him.

The man was so far gone that an operation seemed hopeless, but
nevertheless it was worth trying. Grenfell sent messengers far and
near for reserve supplies that he had left at various points to be
drawn upon in cases of emergency, and in a little while had at his
command some opiates, a small amount of ether, some silk for
ligatures, some crude substitutes for instruments, and the supply of
communal wine from the missionary's little church, five miles away.

While these things had been gathered in, the flow of blood had been
abated by the use of a tourniquet. There was scarcely enough ether to
be of use, but with the assistance of two men Dr. Grenfell applied it
and operated.

One of the assistants fainted, but the other stuck faithfully to his
post, and with a cool head and steady hand did Dr. Grenfell's bidding.
The operation was performed successfully, and the young soldier's
life was saved through Dr. Grenfell's skillful treatment. Today this
fisherman has but one leg, but he is well and happy and a useful man
in the world.

Fate takes a hand in our lives sometimes, and plays strange pranks
with us. In New York a group of gentlemen were impatiently awaiting
the arrival of Dr. Grenfell, while he, in an isolated cottage on the
rugged coast of Northern Newfoundland was saving a fisherman's life,
and in the importance and joy of this service had perhaps for the time
quite forgotten the gentlemen and the meeting and even New York.

Perhaps Providence had a hand in it all. If the water lanes had not
closed, and the motor boat had not been damaged, and Dr. Grenfell and
William Taylor had not been sent adrift on the ice, and no obstacles
had stood in the way of Dr. Grenfell's journey to New York, and the
_Strathcona_ had not been frozen into the ice pack, in all probability
this brave young soldier and fisherman would have died. There is no
doubt that _he_ believes God set the stage to send Dr. Grenfell on
that ninety-mile hike.




XXIII

REINDEER AND OTHER THINGS


Hunting in a northern wilderness is never to be depended upon.
Sometimes game is plentiful, and sometimes it is scarcely to be had at
all. This is the case both with fur bearing animals and food game. So
it is in Labrador. When I have been in that country I have depended
upon my gun to get my living, just as the Indians do. One year I all
but starved to death, because caribou and other game was scarce. Other
years I have lived in plenty, with a caribou to shoot whenever I
needed meat.

In Labrador the Eskimos and liveyeres rely upon the seals to supply
them with the greater part of their dog feed, supplemented by fish,
cod heads and nearly any offal. The Eskimos eat seal meat, too, with a
fine relish, both cooked and raw, and when the seals are not too old
their meat, properly cooked, is very good eating indeed for anybody.

The Indians rely on the caribou, or wild reindeer, to furnish their
chief food supply, and to a large extent the caribou is also the chief
meat animal of the liveyeres.

Sometimes caribou are plentiful enough on certain sections of the
coast north of Hamilton Inlet. I remember that in January, 1903, an
immense herd came out to the coast north of Hamilton Inlet, They
passed in thousands in front of a liveyere's cabin, and standing in
his door the liveyere shot with his rifle more than one hundred of
them, only stopping his slaughter when his last cartridge was used.
From up and down the coast for a hundred miles Eskimos and liveyeres
came with dogs and komatik to haul the carcasses to their homes, for
the liveyere who killed the animals gave to those who had killed none
all that he could not use himself, and none was wasted.

That was a year of plenty. Oftener than not no caribou come within
reach of the folk that live on the coast, and in these frequent
seasons of scarcity the only meat they have in winter is the salt pork
they buy at the trading posts, if they have the means to buy it,
together with the rabbits and grouse they hunt, and, in the wooded
districts, an occasional porcupine. Now and again, to be sure, a polar
bear is killed, but this is seldom. Owls are eaten with no less relish
than partridges, and lynx meat is excellent, as I can testify from
experience.

But the smaller game is not sufficient to supply the needs and it
occurred to Doctor Grenfell that, if the Lapland reindeer could be
introduced, this animal would not only prove superior to the dog for
driving, but would also furnish a regular supply of meat to the
people, and also milk for the babies.

The domestic reindeer is a species of caribou. In other words, the
caribou is the wild reindeer. The domestic and the wild animals eat
the same food, the gray caribou moss, which carpets northern
Newfoundland and the whole of Labrador, furnishing an inexhaustible
supply of forage everywhere in forest and in barrens. The Lapland
reindeer had been introduced into Alaska and northwestern Canada with
great success. They would thrive equally well in Labrador and
Newfoundland.

With this in mind Doctor Grenfell learned all he could about reindeer
and reindeer raising. The more he studied the subject the better
convinced he was that domesticated reindeer introduced into Labrador
would prove a boon to the people. He appealed to some of his generous
friends and they subscribed sufficient money to undertake the
experiment.

In 1907 three hundred reindeer were purchased and landed safely at St.
Anthony, Newfoundland. With experienced Lapland herders to care for
them they were turned loose in the open country. For a time the herd
grew and thrived and the prospects for complete success of the
experiment were bright.

It was Doctor Grenfell's policy to first demonstrate the usefulness of
reindeer in Newfoundland, and finally transfer a part of the herd to
Labrador. The great difficulty that stood in the way of rearing the
animals in eastern Labrador was the vicious wolf dogs. It was obvious
that dogs and reindeer could not live together, for the dogs would
hunt and kill the inoffensive reindeer just as their primitive
progenitors, the wolves, hunt and kill the wild caribou.

Because of the dogs, no domestic animals can be kept in eastern
Labrador. Once Malcolm MacLean, a Scotch settler at Carter's Basin, in
Hamilton Inlet, imported a cow. He built a strong stable for it
adjoining his cabin. Twelve miles away, at Northwest River, the dogs
one winter night when the Inlet had frozen sniffed the air blowing
across the ice. They smelled the cow. Like a pack of wolves they were
off. They trailed the scent those twelve miles over the ice to the
door of the stable where Malcolm's cow was munching wild hay. They
broke down the stable door, and before Malcolm was aware of what was
taking place the cow was killed and partly devoured.

For generations untold, Labradormen have kept dogs for hauling their
loads and the dogs have served them well. They were not willing to
substitute reindeer. They knew their dogs and they did not know the
reindeer, and they refused to kill their dogs. To educate them to the
change it was evident would be a long process.

In the meantime the herd in Newfoundland was growing. In 1911 it
numbered one thousand head, and in 1912 approximated thirteen hundred.
Then an epidemic attacked them and numbers died. Following this,
illegitimate hunting of the animals began, and without proper means
of guarding them Doctor Grenfell decided to turn them over to the
Canadian Government.

During those strenuous years of war, when food was so scarce, a good
many of the herd had been killed by poachers. Perhaps we cannot blame
the poachers, for when a man's family is hungry he will go to lengths
to get food for his children, and Doctor Grenfell recognized the
stress of circumstances that led men to kill his animals and carry off
the meat. The epidemic, as stated, had proved fatal to a considerable
number of the animals, and the herd therefore was much reduced in
size. The remnant were corralled in 1918, and shipped to the Canadian
Government at St. Augustine, in southern Labrador, where they are now
thriving and promise marvelous results.

Some day Doctor Grenfell's efforts with reindeer will prove a great
success at least in southern Labrador, where the dogs are less
vicious, and play a less important part in the life of the people than
on the eastern coast. Upon these thousands of acres of uncultivated
and otherwise useless land the reindeer will multiply until they will
not only feed the people of Labrador but will become no small part of
the meat supply of eastern Canada. His introduction of reindeer into
southern Labrador will be remembered as one of the great acts of his
great life of activity. Their introduction was the introduction of an
industry that will in time place the people of this section in a
position of thrifty independence.

There never was yet a man with any degree of self-respect who did not
wish to pay his own way in the world. Every real man wishes to stand
squarely upon his own feet, and pay for what he receives. To accept
charity from others always makes a man feel that he has lost out in
the battle of life. It robs him of ambition for future effort and of
self-reliance and self-respect.

Doctor Grenfell has always recognized this human characteristic. It
was evident to him when he entered the mission field in Labrador that
in seasons when the fisheries failed and no fur could be trapped a
great many of the people in Labrador and some in northern Newfoundland
would be left without a means of earning their living. There are no
factories there and no work to be had except at the fisheries in the
summer, trapping in winter and the brief seal hunt in the spring and
fall. When any of these fail, the pantries are empty and the men and
their families must suffer. But most of the people are too proud to
admit their poverty when a season of poverty comes to them. They are
eager for work and willing and ready always to turn their hand to
anything that offers a chance to earn a dollar.

To provide for such emergencies Grenfell, many years ago, established
a lumber camp in the north of Newfoundland, and at Canada Bay in the
extreme northeast a ship building yard where schooners and other small
craft could be built, and nearly everyone out of work could find
employment.

In southern and eastern Labrador, where wood is to be had for the
cutting, he arranged to purchase such wood as the people might deliver
to his vessels. In return for the wood he gave clothing and other
supplies.

Then came mat and rug weaving, spinning and knitting and basket
making. Through Grenfell's efforts volunteer teachers went north in
summers to teach the people these useful arts. He supplied looms.
Every one was eager to learn and today Labrador women are making rugs,
baskets and various saleable articles in their homes, and Grenfell
sells for them in the "States" and Canada all they make. Thus a new
means of earning a livelihood was opened to the women, where formerly
there was nothing to which they could turn their hand to earn money
when the men were away at the hunting and trapping.

Mrs. Grenfell has more recently introduced the art of making
artificial flowers. The women learned it readily, and their product is
quite equal to that of the French makers.

Doctor Grenfell had been many years on the coast before he was
married. Mrs. Grenfell was Miss Anna MacCalahan, of Chicago. Upon her
marriage to Doctor Grenfell, Mrs. Grenfell went with him to his
northern field. She cruises with him on his hospital ship, the
_Strathcona_, acting as his secretary, braving stormy seas, and
working for the people with all his own self-sacrificing devotion. She
is a noble inspiration in his great work, and the "mother of the
coast."

Doctor Grenfell has established a school at St. Anthony open not only
to the orphans of the children's home but to all the children of the
coast. There are schools on the Labrador also, connected with the
mission. It is a fine thing to see the eagerness of the Labrador boys
and girls to learn. They are offered an opportunity through Doctor
Grenfell's thoughtfulness that their parents never had and they
appreciate it. It is no exaggeration to say that they enjoy their
schools quite as much as our boys and girls enjoy moving pictures, and
they give as close attention to their books and to the instruction as
any of us would give to a picture. They look upon the school as a fine
gift, as indeed it is. The teachers are giving them something every
day--a much finer thing than a new sled or a new doll--knowledge that
they will carry with them all their lives and that they can use
constantly. And so it happens that study is not work to them.

How much Doctor Grenfell has done for the Labrador! How much he is
doing every day! How much more he would do if those who have in
abundance would give but a little more to aid him! How much happiness
he has spread and is spreading in that northland!




XXIV

THE SAME GRENFELL


Doctor Grenfell is not alone the doctor of the coast. He is also a
duly appointed magistrate, and wherever he happens to be on Sundays,
where there is no preacher to conduct religious services, and it
rarely happens there is one, for preachers are scarce on the coast, he
takes the preacher's place. It does not matter whether it is a Church
of England, a Presbyterian, a Methodist, or a Baptist congregation, he
speaks to the people and conducts the service with fine unsectarian
religious devotion. Grenfell is a deeply religious man, and in his
religious life there is no buncomb or humbug. He lives what he
preaches. In his audiences at his Sunday services are Protestants and
Roman Catholics alike, and they all love him and will travel far to
hear him.

Norman Duncan, in that splendid book, "Doctor Grenfell's Parish,"
tells the story of a man who had committed a great wrong, amounting to
a crime. The man was brought before Grenfell, as Labrador magistrate.
He acknowledged his crime, but was defiant. The man cursed the
doctor.

"You will do as I tell you," said the Doctor, "or I will put you under
arrest, and lock you up."

The man laughed, and called Doctor Grenfell's attention to the fact
that he was outside his judicial district, and had no power to make
the arrest.

"Never mind," warned the Doctor quietly. "I have a crew strong enough
to take you into my district."

The man retorted that he, also, had a crew.

"Are the men of your crew loyal enough to fight for you?" asked the
Doctor. "There's going to be a fight if you don't submit without it.
This is what you must do," he continued. "You will come to the church
service at seven o'clock on Sunday evening, and before the whole
congregation you will confess your crime."

Again the man cursed the Doctor and defied him. It happened that this
man was a rich trader and felt his power.

The man did not appear at the church on Sunday evening. Doctor
Grenfell announced to the congregation that the man was to appear to
confess and receive judgment, and he asked every one to keep his seat
while he went to fetch the fellow.

He found the man in a neighbor's house, surrounded by his friends. It
was evident the man's crew had no mind to fight for him, they knew he
was guilty. The man was praying, perhaps to soften the Doctor's
heart.

[Illustration: "I HAVE A CREW STRONG ENOUGH TO TAKE YOU INTO MY
DISTRICT"]

"Prayer is a good thing in its place," said the Doctor, "but it
doesn't 'go' here. Come with me."

The man, like a whipped dog, went with the Doctor. Entering the
meeting room, he stood before the waiting congregation and made a
complete confession.

"You deserve the punishment of man and God?" asked the Doctor.

"I do," said the man, no longer defiant.

The Doctor told him that God would forgive him if he truly repented,
but that the people, being human, could not, for he had wronged them
sorely. Then he charged the people that for a whole year none of them
should speak or deal with that man; but if he made an honest effort to
mend his way, they could feel free to talk with him and deal with him
again at the end of the year.

"This relentless judge," says Norman Duncan, "on a stormy July day
carried many bundles ashore at Cartwright, in Sandwich Bay of the
Labrador. The wife of the Hudson's Bay Company's agent examined them
with delight. They were Christmas gifts from the children of the
"States" to the lads and little maids of that coast. The Doctor never
forgets the Christmas gifts." The wife of the agent stowed away the
gifts to distribute them at next Christmas time.

"It makes them _very_ happy," said the agent's wife.

"Not long ago," said Duncan, "I saw a little girl with a stick of
wood for a dolly. Are they not afraid to play with these pretty
things?"

"Sometimes," she laughed, "but it makes them happy just to look at
them. But they do play with them. There is a little girl up the bay
who _has kissed the paint off her dolly_!"

And so even the tiniest, most forlorn little lad or lass is not
forgotten by Doctor Grenfell. He is the Santa Claus of the coast. He
never forgets. Nothing, if it will bring joy into the life of any one,
is too big or too small for his attention.

Can we wonder that Grenfell is happy in his work? Can we wonder that
nothing in the world could induce him to leave the Labrador for a life
of ease? Battling, year in and year out, with stormy seas in summer,
and ice and snow and arctic blizzards in winter, the joy of life is in
him. Every day has a thrill for him. Here in this rugged land of
endeavor he has for thirty years been healing the sick and saving
life, easing pain, restoring cripples to strength, feeding and
clothing and housing the poor, and putting upon their feet with useful
work unfortunate men that they might look the world in the face
bravely and independently.

There is no happiness in the world so keen as the happiness that comes
through making others happy. This is what Doctor Grenfell is doing. He
is giving his life to others, and he is getting no end of joy out of
life himself. The life he leads possesses for him no element of
self-denial, after all, and he never looks upon it as a life of
hardship. He loves the adventure of it, and by straight, clean living
he has prepared himself, physically and mentally, to meet the storms
and cold and privations with no great sense of discomfort.

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell is the same sportsman, as, when a lad, he
roamed the Sands o' Dee; the same lover of fun that he was when he
went to Marlborough College; the same athlete that made the football
team and rowed with the winning crew when a student in the
University--sympathetic, courageous, tireless, a doer among men and
above all, a Christian gentleman.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Printed in the United States of America_


       *       *       *       *       *

Obvious typos fixed:

"book" for "look", page 132
"alseep" for "asleep", page 195 (twice)
"hundrel" for "hundred", page 214
"seaprated" for "separated", page 216
"Malcom's" for "Malcolm's", page 228 (twice)
"bad" for "bade", page 156
"Trezize" for "Trevize", page 38

       *       *       *       *       *